


A War of White Shadows

by tristram_again



Category: Kingdom Hearts (Video Games)
Genre: Alternate KH3, F/M, M/M, Multi, Organization XIII (Kingdom Hearts), Sora gets norted at the end of Dream Drop Distance, Soranort - Freeform, things go downhill from there
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-30
Updated: 2021-02-16
Packaged: 2021-03-04 17:53:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 22
Words: 24,840
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25000450
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tristram_again/pseuds/tristram_again
Summary: “Do you see now?” Xehanort says. “The darkness covets you, Sora. The shadows fit you like a second skin. Deny it all you want—you were born to control the Heartless. And your keyblade refuses to let you summon it now, doesn't it? Now that your heart is tainted." Xehanort smiles. "It hardly matters. The darkness will never abandon you again."Unwillingly drafted into Master Xehanort's new Organization XIII, Sora finds himself leashed to the darkness. Working in the shadows shouldn't come this naturally to a boy who fights for the light. And now, forced to track down the New Seven Hearts with his Organization XIII peers, Sora is unable to stop the war that threatens to lay waste to the universe.Sora's only hope is realized when Riku and Kairi take his place as the light's champions—even if he must eventually meet them on the battlefield. But Sora's uncontrollable darkness threatens to consume even them. The people he loves cannot be safe until he escapes the Organization and controls the powerful darkness inside himself.Except—he's not sure he wants to.An alternate take on KH3, in which Sora is 'Norted at the end of Dream Drop Distance. Soranort fic.Updates frequently!
Relationships: Aqua/Terra (Kingdom Hearts), Aqua/Xemnas (Kingdom Hearts), Axel/Saïx (Kingdom Hearts), Kairi/Riku/Sora (Kingdom Hearts), Roxas/Xion (Kingdom Hearts)
Comments: 68
Kudos: 155





	1. Darkness Calls I

Sora strains against his iron shackles when a young Xehanort appears out of the dust. The cuffs on his wrists cut into his skin, and his legs are long numb from his unwilling vigil in the Keyblade Graveyard, where he has been standing for days. But he wills himself to forget his fatigue when he sees the smile painted on Xehanort’s face.

“The Master is tired of waiting on you,” Xehanort says.

“What did you do to Riku?” Sora demands.

The thick iron shackles holding Sora’s wrists are attached to three chains apiece; each of these chains is strung high overhead. The distant ends sink deep into the ancient cliffs’ walls. The web of chain links stretch high above Sora, interconnected here and there, like a pair of web-like iron wings. Xehanort regards these chains. Then, he breathes in, uncoiling his hands, and steps into the shadows of the massive chasm to face his adversary.

“Riku,” he repeats. “Could he be the keyblade wielder who tried to attack the Master?”

“Answer me!”

“I did nothing. I never raised a hand against him.”

Sora bares his teeth. “You’re lying. Riku would never let you bring me here.”

“You’re right,” Xehanort says. “Which is why it was so prudent of you to handle him for me.”

Sora’s head swims. Handle him? Why is he saying that? He can’t shake the feeling that Riku is hurt. He swallows, tasting dust. When he looks up to glare at Xehanort, a second black-cloaked figure catches his eye. Saïx. A shadowy gateway evaporates behind him. He holds Sora’s gaze, filled with contempt as ever, before turning to Xehanort. 

“Master Xehanort is waiting.”

The young Xehanort waves him off. “Sora wanted to talk. Don’t we owe him that?”

Sora lets out a frustrated groan. His throat burns. “Cut it out, Xehanort. I’m not playing games with you.”

“Nor I you, seeing as we are now peers.” Xehanort paces slowly past Sora, though he never completely turns his back. “Now that your heart has, after all, accepted the Master’s own heart, we should not keep secrets from each other. I wish you would stop this nonsense and return to join the ranks of the Organization, where you _should_ be.” He pauses, then turns towards Sora. “Do you truly not remember? The way you lashed out at— what was his name?”

Sora’s shoulders tense. Dread spreads into his limbs. “Tell me where Riku is.”

“Yes—Riku.” Xehanort’s head tilts in thought. “It very much took Riku by surprise as well. The look on his face when you tore into him. So sudden.”

“Stop lying.”

“And your King Mickey. Your betrayal cut him so deeply. I don’t believe even the Master expected you to take to the darkness so readily, with such violence. As if some beast was coiled inside you, waiting.”

“Stop talking!” Sora cries. “Can’t you see that I… that I don’t believe you?” He sags against his binds. As he stares at the ground, vision blurring, water droplets begin to blossom in the dust.

Xehanort looks away, staring off at the Eastward horizon. His cruelty seems to leave him. He grows distant. “It seems your body remembers, though your mind does not. I have been told your memory—yours in particular—is a chain easily severed. Is that true?”

Before Sora can react, Xehanort’s arm shoots into his field of vision and grabs a fistful of his shirt. He yanks it up, exposing a patch of burned and twisted half-healed skin. Sora shouts, jumping back in horror. But he can’t look away. A memory jumps unbidden into his mind, he and Axel—this battle different from the ones before. Axel’s face, unable to conceal his own horror and fear as he hurls two flaming chakrams; Sora’s vision vibrating red with adrenaline, blood under his fingernails, blood smearing from his hands to his face to protect himself from the assault; his movements lightning-fast but not controlled enough get out of the way as Axel’s chakrams throw him back and burn him in his ribs; a fleeting glimpse of Riku’s crumpled body on the floor between them, red standing out in stark contrast to the white floor.

“Your friend left this scar to remind you,” Xehanort growls. He shakes his fist, still clutching fabric. “And you gave them scars enough to remember your betrayal for a good, long while. The sooner you accept that, the sooner you can face the Master. He will help you understand. Are you ready, or not?”

Sora shakes his head. “You’re lying.”

Xehanort releases him. Sore stumbles to catch himself. 

“He’s not ready,” Saïx says.

“He’s lying to himself,” Xehanort says. The words are arrogant. Self-righteous. “He knows the truth. There’s nowhere else for him to go.” He turns his back, walking towards the mouth of the chasm.

Xehanort’s words are toxins. They creep under Sora’s skin, into his bones, curl around his beating heart. A familiar compulsion—like adrenaline injected straight into his chest and pumping from his heart into his veins—seizes him now, just as it did when he fought Axel. More unwelcome memories consume him. Sora squeezes his eyes shut. Xehanort is telling lies. Lies. Sora doesn’t believe it. He wouldn’t hurt them. Not his friends. Not Riku. His heart thunders, dark energy seizing his limbs. His hands turn to fists and the fatigue plaguing his muscles disappears. When he opens his eyes, he sees his body consumed in darkness. 

_Liar. Liar. Liar._

The mantra seizes his limbs in a mad fury. He rips his fists down, snapping the iron chains like cloth. He sees Xehanort’s back turned. Sees red. 

_Liar!_

Sora lunges.


	2. Darkness Calls II

The neck Sora grasps is not Xehanort’s, but Saïx’s. Ever the loyal henchman, he had intercepted Sora’s attack. Xehanort stands, unharmed, in the sunlight. The opportunity to rip him apart as Sora craves has passed. 

The voice in Sora’s head asks himself why he craves something like that. He should never want that.

Sora holds Saïx off the ground by his throat. Saïx’s passive stare is replaced by a defiant glare. He’s angry, but with the sun looming high overhead, he can’t draw out his berserker’s rage. He struggles. He wraps his hands around Sora’s wrist. Sora stares up at him with featureless, glowing yellow eyes. His palpable darkness threatens to consume them both.

“Unhand me,” Saïx grinds out.

_If he wanted to live,_ says a voice in Sora’s head, _he shouldn’t have stepped in front of Xehanort. Maim him. Kill him._

Sora doesn’t. He’s not a murderer. But there’s something so gratifying about holding Saïx’s life in his hand that he can’t bring himself to let him go, either.

Instinctively, he angles his wrist to accommodate his keyblade and mentally calls for it. It doesn’t appear. He looks down at his fingers, flexing his hand. His darkness-addled mind has trouble comprehending what’s happening—has forgotten his repeated attempts to summon his keyblade since he awoke as a prisoner of the Keyblade Graveyard.

“Do you see now?” Xehanort says. “The darkness covets you, Sora. The shadows fit you like a second skin. Deny it all you want—you were born to control the Heartless. And your keyblade refuses to let you summon it now, doesn't it? Now that your heart is tainted." Xehanort smiles. "It hardly matters. The darkness will never abandon you again."

The words are hypnotic. The shadows at the edge of his vision close in, and his hand closes around Saïx’s windpipe. But then, he sees someone—glimpses the familiar form of Roxas, far away, past Saïx and Xehanort. Two blurry figures flank him. 

“Don’t kill him,” Roxas says. They should be much too far away to hear each other, but Roxas’ voice is clear. “Your mind won’t survive it. That’s what Xehanort wants—to break your will.”

“They deserve to be hurt,” Sora hisses. 

“Maybe,” says the figure to Roxas’ right. His voice is the same, but there is a different quality to it. “But you don’t deserve to be their executioner, do you?”

The figure to Roxas’ left speaks—a clear, chiming female voice. “Saïx is almost the same as you. His body is enslaved. His heart was ripped out against his will. His chains aren’t physical, but they are there.”

“Save your wrath for the one who deserves it,” Roxas says.

Then, the three figures are gone.

Sora’s hand trembles. He lowers Saïx to the ground and releases his chokehold. Saïx catches his breath without the theatrics of coughing or panting. 

Keeping his voice low, Sora asks, “Is it true? Did things happen the way Xehanort says?”

Saix breathes heavily, glaring, but he nods.

“Is Riku alive?”

Saix—who held Sora’s gaze in spite and defiance even as Sora squeezed the life out of him—looks away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please visit this story's blog (kingdom-hearts-fic-writing.tumblr.com) to read next chapter's preview, find bonus story notes, see scenes that didn't make it in, and share your own plot feedback and ideas (and generally yell about Kingdom Hearts)! This author appreciates it.


	3. Refusal I

“The boy is finally awake.” Master Xehanort leans forward from his place atop the tallest of a circle of stone pillars. He fastens his hands behind his back. “I have a thousand questions thanks to your little display.”

Saïx steers Sora to the middle of the circle of pillars. With a twinge of lingering anger, Sora jerks his shoulder free of Saïx’s grasp and stands on his own. 

Xehanort, seeing this, strokes his white goatee. “But perhaps it would be prudent to give you an explanation first.” He quirks an eyebrow at his younger incarnation, who now stands on an adjacent pillar. 

“Our new friend is incredulous,” Young Xehanort calls tonelessly.

Sora bites back the irate fire still burning on his tongue. He tries to cool his flaring temper, remembering what it felt like to squeeze Saïx’s throat. He focuses on that shame.

“As am I,” Master Xehanort says. “I expected you to take to the darkness slowly, and you showed yourself to be a prodigy. An untapped well of talent from which to draw forth a veritable flood. But you were unrefined. Your skin turned to shadows—though certainly not your eyes—and, even as you stand before me now, your skin and eyes do not appear… as they should.” He peers down at Sora. “What would you have me make of it?”

Sora’s mouth remains tightly shut.

Master Xehanort’s bright gaze searches him with a searing curiosity. “Very well. Perhaps we can sand down your rough edges with a bit of field training.”

At this, Sora finally speaks. “You’re crazy if you think for one second that I’ll do anything you say.”

Master Xehanort’s face half-splits into a smirk. “Fascinating. You don’t feel the least bit compelled to do as your master says?”

“You’re not my master.”

“Come, now. You show great promise. Are you not the least bit curious about your new powers? Wouldn’t you like to learn how to control the darkness? How to travel between worlds? Do you not realized that a shard of my very heart is embedded inside your own?”

Sora’s fingers grip at the fabric covering his chest. His head pounds. How can Xehanort possibly be telling the truth? Is there a shard of an evil heart beating in his chest?

Master Xehanort says, “How about a trade? You answer one of my questions, and you earn my answer to one of yours.”

A rebellious spark flares up in Sora’s chest. Maybe this is his chance to find a flaw in Master Xehanort’s plan. “Why me?” he asks, before Master Xehanort can.

Master Xehanort chuckles. “I’ve had my eye on you. You are a practical choice for a vessel—one of the Guardians of Light, and a former keyblade wielder with considerable skill. Without you, the Guardians of Light will flounder to keep their allies. Morale will fall.”

“How can you know that they’ll—”

“Don’t be greedy, boy. It’s my turn to ask a question. Have you used the darkness to fight before? Or was the first time three weeks ago?”

Three weeks? Sora reels. He’s been chained to a chasm in the Keyblade Graveyard for three weeks? “No, I…”

“Don’t lie to me. I’ll know.” Xehanort taps his own chest. 

“I can’t do it on purpose. Only when I’m really desperate. But this was… this was more intense.” Angry was the word on the tip of his tongue. He shakes the errant thought out of his head. He needs to focus. “What about Riku?”

“What about him? Ask me a question I can answer.”

“What happened to him?”

“That is beyond the horizon of my present knowledge.”

“Then what was the last you saw of him?”

“He pursued us into a Corridor of Darkness with your keyblade in his hand. He did not make it far before the Corridor collapsed around him. If he’s lucky, that was the last of him. If not—well, we’ll see soon enough. The Heartless will smell his wounds.”

Sora’s heart squeezes painfully. _He did come after me._

Xehanort steeples his fingers. “Would you say you have been experiencing any… unusual sensory stimuli recently? Seeing things that are not there,” he adds, seeing Sora’s blank expression. “Hallucinations.”

Sora considers it. He shakes his head.

Xehanort leans forward. “No? Are you quite sure? No silhouettes at the edges of your vision? No murmuring voices in your ears?”

Sora stares at the ground. Silhouettes and murmurs—did Xehanort mean Roxas? How could he possibly know about that?

“That’s an awfully specific question, Xehanort,” Sora retorts. 

Xehanort leans back, a smug smile on his lips. “And what did it say to you?”

“I think that’s the end of your turn.”

Xehanort’s smile falters somewhat, but he nods for Sora to continue their game.

“How do I separate the shard of your heart from mine?” Sora calls up to the Master standing atop the pillar, splaying his arms out in an open challenge. 

“A very serious question,” Xehanort muses. “Are you sure you’d rather not receive a more agreeable answer?”

“Are you trying to change the rules of the game?” Sora asks.

“Very well. You cannot extract my heart from yours alone. Either I remove it willingly, or you rip your own heart out of your chest” —he brought up his own hand and squeezed it into a fist, grinning— “and shatter it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading this story so far! Please consider leaving a comment to tell me what you think.


	4. Refusal II

Again, Sora must fight the heat in his chest that threatens to spread through his body. If he wants the shard of Xehanort out of his chest, he has to rip out his own heart and shatter it into pieces. He would become a Heartless again. If he does, what happens to Roxas? What would become of Riku and Kairi?

“However,” Xehanort added, as if lecturing a child with a cautionary tale, “it need not be permanent. Once my ends are achieved—and they are finite, you see, quite simple—I will let you go free.”

“Nothing you say can make me help you. I know what you’re trying to do.”

“I certainly can’t force you, heart or no. Your will is admirably strong,” he admits with a humorless chuckle. “Though it is ultimately useless. If you refuse to do as you are asked, I have no choice but to imprison you here until my plan comes to fruition. Perhaps by the time my plans come to fruition, the darkness in you will persuade you of my cause.” 

He waves his hand. The next thing Sora knows, a shadowy something under Sora’s feet reaches up through the earth and pulls him under the surface. Sora slams his elbows down, stopping his rapid descent just above the waist. Jagged rock press in on all sides of his legs. He pushes hard with his palms to pull himself back up, but there is no give. His arms tremble with the effort. 

Master Xehanort raises his hand and closes his fist. Rock walls rise slowly on all sides of Sora, closing in on him. It’s an earthen tomb. Master Xehanort means to bury him alive.

Then, they hear the soft, distant sound of a Corridor of Darkness appearing. To Master Xehanort’s left, a black-cloaked man appears through the Corridor. His wavy pink hair, curved away from his face dozens of flower petals, strikes Sora as familiar. He can’t remember why.

The man bows his head. “Master.”

“Marluxia. Report.”

“The Castle of Dreams yielded no progress to our ends. The one named Cinderella is no longer a Princess of Heart. She appears to have passed on the light in her heart.”

Master Xehanort frowned. “I see. Disappointing, but not unexpected. That makes four former pure hearts who gave up their lights. Yet another new Princess of Heart for us to track down. We must move even more quickly if we are to identify all seven and…” He glances down at Sora, who is still struggling with all his strength to keep himself above ground. “… liberate them.”

Sora slips slightly, scrabbling for a better hold. “You’re gathering the Seven Princesses of Heart again? What about the Guardians of Light?”

“Indeed. I doubt your friends have the wherewithal to scrape together the extra Guardians they’d need in the wake of your betrayal. Among other particular _traits_ you possess. Ah, but this plan of mine no longer pertains to you, does it?” He twists his fist slightly, and the rock envelops Sora’s arms and drags him in further.

“Wait!” Sora’s head spins. If the Organization is looking for the Seven Princesses, they’ll need Kairi. If Riku isn’t there to protect her, and they find her, then… no, it’s unthinkable. He can’t let Kairi go through that ordeal again. There has to be a way to protect her if he just… “If you’re looking for the Princesses of Heart, I’ll… I’ll help you.”

“Oh? Why the sudden change of mind?”

“Um… see…”

A sharp laugh interrupts Sora’s half-formed excuse. Behind him, on one of the shortest pillars, a woman with electric yellow eyes and an aggressively haughty grin stares down her nose at him. 

“Sora’s worried about his poor, pretty little damsel-in-distress friend. What was her name again?” She taps her chin in mock thought. “Kirin? Kylo?”

Sora feels a blush flare up. “You better shut your mouth when you’re talking about Kairi!”

The woman looks briefly confused. Then angry. “You little brat! I have seniority over you!”

Sora—despite now being submerged up to his shoulders—jerks his shoulders testily. “Then why don’t you come down here and prove it!”

“I’m about to prove my foot in your—”

“Larxene.” Marluxia pinches the bridge of his nose. “Honestly.”

Larxene straightens up. “What? He practically started— was asking for it,” she amended.

“ _He_ is a child.”

Another voice, this one younger, strained, pierces into the conversation with a mocking laugh. Sora has to crane his neck hard to see this person slouched atop the furthest column. A reflective black mask covers his face. “Is this loser the one we all came here to see? Literally worthless. I don’t know why you bother with this roach, Master, now that you have me.”

Larxene scowls. “At least roaches know when to stay out of the way. This one doesn’t understand the concept of keeping himself alive and out of danger when it’s staring him in the face.” She stares down at Sora, arms tightly folded. “You’re lucky to be one of the Master’s new vessels, or you’d be dead meat.”

Master Xehahort glances mildly past her. “Larxene, Sora will accompany you on your next mission to the realm of Arendelle.”

“What?” Sora and Larxene cry in unison.

Sora’s earthen prison suddenly releases him. He scrambles out and gets to his feet. Then Larxene is suddenly there, sweeping into his personal space as she stoops to look him in the face. Sora instinctively calls for his keyblade. It fails, again. 

Larxene doesn’t seem satisfied with what she sees. She straightens up and stalks in a half-circle around him like a caged panther. “You did this, you brat.”

Sora is indignant. “What did I do? I don’t even know you!”

“Be off with you,” Master Xehanort snaps. “Let the frozen mountains cool your tempers. And if either one of you comes back in two or more pieces, you will be loath to discover what punishments I can inflict upon you. Now, go.”

“Wait! Kairi—is she a Princess of Heart?” The question tumbles out before Sora can stop it. Inwardly, he flinches. He should be keeping his cards closer to his chest.

Master Xehanort chuckles. “My boy, you haven’t earned the answer to that question.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who has commented and left kudos so far!   
> How do you predict Arendelle will be different this time?


	5. Threshold I

Sora trails Larxene through knee-deep snow. The Kingdom of Arendelle, they call this place. Forget a kingdom—Sora hasn’t seen so much as an outhouse. He can barely see his hand in front of his face with the haze of snow whipping around them. He grabs the edges of his black hood and pulls down, gritting his chattering teeth. Anything to get out of the cold and into a realm of relative warmth. A memory of roasting marshmallows over a beach campfire with Riku and Kairi springs to mind.

“Tone it down with the shivering. We’re almost there.” Larxene glances back at him. She’s unfazed by the cold. “The castle town isn’t far. Where there’s a castle, there’s a princess.”

Sora sneezes and groans. “Let’s look for the universe’s first Prince of Heart next time. Maybe on a tropical island somewhere.”

“Hard sell. Even when one princess gives up her light and passes it on, the universe likes the next one in line to be just as pretty and ladylike.”

“There’s never been a prince?”

“Doubt it.” She whips a lock of hair out of her eyes. “But I’d feel almost as sorry for him, if there were.”

Sora stumbles a little in the snow over his black boots. “I think it would be kinda cool to be one of the Seven Hearts. You could always be a good person and make everyone around you happy without messing up.” Another memory of the campfire on the beach, his own clumsy mistake—melted marshmallows in the sand—and Riku’s crestfallen face. Kairi was the one who cheered him up.

Larxene keeps her eyes trained on the path down the mountain. “Sounds like you’re putting little Kaiju on a pedestal.”

Sora isn’t familiar with the term. “Is that… bad?”

“It means your expectations are burdensome.”

“You’re… not like Kairi.”

Larxene smirks. “When you put someone on a pedestal, they have a long way to fall.”

The wind howls around them. Eventually, it calms as dusk begins to fall. 

Sora speaks slowly, chooses his words carefully. “What would happen to Kairi if she… passed on her light?”

“Aw, is the brat worried about his sweet little Kyubey?”

“I _just_ said her real name.”

“Like I’d know. But I hope she hasn’t. I’d love to get my claws in her again.”

“What do you mean, ‘again’?”

“You know, I’m really hurt that you don’t remember our first meeting.” She pauses in the snow and turns to look at him. The setting sun behind her casts her silhouette in amber. 

Sora casts his hood off, now that the snowstorm has quelled. He rubs his chin in thought, characteristically animated. “No, wait. I think I remember. Were you the one who turns into a twelve-foot bear, or the one who bakes their enemies’ hearts into a cake and makes them eat it?”

Larxene bursts out into a cackle—a real one, if Sora isn’t mistaken—and snorts. At that, she stops short, and Sora laughs. 

“Did you just _snort_?” he asks.

“Nobody would believe you!” Larxene’s cheeks are faintly pink as she swivels back around and resumes the march.

Night blankets the mountain, and they walk through the snow in silence for a little while.

Then, Larxene snaps her fingers and summons three ninja nobodies. They turn towards the pair, and Sora’s heart leaps for a moment when he thinks she’s about to murder him—and they had just become, like, work friends at the very least—when the nobodies leap up and sail overhead. Sora spins around, hears a yelp, and—far down the path from where he stands, almost eclipsed by the snow’s fog—the nobodies rush a young woman wrapped in a magenta cloak. She flees from the nobodies, her braided red hair whipping behind her as she runs.

Sora takes two running steps before he realizes it, and then Larxene’s hand clamps down on his shoulder and yanks him back.

“Hey! What are you doing? That could be her!”

“Chill out. No way the old man would send us anywhere an _actual_ pure heart.” She scoffs and snaps her fingers. The nobodies disappear. “You’re on probation, and I’m number twelve. We’re the unfavorites.”

Sora squints at her, searching for a quirking up of her lips. But she’s not joking. “Has anyone ever told you that you need to stick up for yourself?”

She sours, scowling. “Just thought I’d be honest with you, rookie.”

“Assigning numbers to people isn’t a very honest business practice.” Sora shields his eyes from the wind and searches the path behind them. The girl with braids is gone. “Come on, Larxene, we should at least check it out. If Master Xehanort really sent us on down a dead end, shouldn’t we waste as much of his time as possible?”

Larxene arches her brows. “There’s a thought.”

They double back and root through the snow until they find footprints. Those footprints lead them up the other side of the mountain, and when night falls, they find themselves facing a towering ice castle. By the time its glistening spires are fully in view, Sora realizes the feeling that has been growing in the pit of his chest. It’s the same sensation of Kairi’s heart in his own. The presence of a pure heart. Except there’s not just one. 

Larxene’s face breaks out into a wide, sharp smile. “Feel that, rookie? You were right. The old man gambled wrong on us. Not only that...” She breathes in through her nose like a wildcat downwind of its prey. “We found _two_ of the New Seven.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Larxene's nobodies are called ninjas, I swear.  
> Would you want to be a Prince/ss of Heart? I dunno, seems like it attracts a lot of unwanted attention.


	6. Threshold II

Larxene waves her hand like a conductor, pulling nobodies from the driven snow like puppets. Their mouths gape, voidlike, at Sora before turning their gazes to the ice castle beyond. Larxene takes off straight for the ice bridge that spans the gorge between them. The nobodies keep pace. They all move together so suddenly that Sora is almost left behind.

"Wait!"

He flash-steps ahead and clamps his hands on the rails on either side of the ice bridge.

"What?" Larxene snaps.

"What, um, what's your plan?"

"The plan is to storm the castle and kidnap the two princesses inside." Larxene plants a hand on her hip. "Maybe you're slow on the draw, here, but we're bad guys. We storm fairy tale castles. That's how it works."

"Uh…" The gears in Sora's head crank and grind. "Shouldn't we be stealthy instead? You know, like, reconnaissance?"

"And why would we do that, when I have a willing army of shadow monsters at my beck and call?"

"Come on, are you afraid I'll nab them both before you get the chance?"

Larxene smirks. "Okay, fine. You're on. But make no mistake—give me one good reason to think you're running away, and I'll break your legs and tell the old man exactly why I did it. Got it?" She gives him no time to answer before shadows curve up from the ground underneath her and she disappears.

Sora cracks his knuckles. Like Riku always said, _you're only in trouble if you get caught_. All he needs to do is find one of the new princesses and get out of there. Without even one of the pure hearts, Xehanort's plan won't come to fruition. And, with any luck, he'll spend all his time chasing Sora instead of going after Kairi.

Sora crests the bridge and steals up the sheer walls of the castle like a cat burglar. Guessing Larxene will start her search near the bottom of the castle, he bypasses the front doors and claims a spire near one of the highest balconies. It's not the most comfortable perch—the ice is supernaturally cold even through his gloves, and he's a little bit wary of losing his grip on the slippery roof and cracking his head open four stories down—but he imagines he is a gargoyle and hunkers down in the icy winds. Soon, he hears voices coming from inside. The balcony doors swing open, and the voices echo out, carrying on an animated conversation.

"You kind of set off an eternal winter… everywhere."

"Everywhere?"

"It's okay, you can just unfreeze it!"

"No I can't— I— I don't know how!"

They disappear back inside, doors yawning open. Sora repositions himself closer to the balcony—nearly slipping more than once—and presses his palms to the translucent walls. In the shadows, he is hidden, but he can see two people inside. One is the red-haired girl from before. Even from this distance, he can feel that her heart is a pure heart. The person she's speaking to, though—it's harder to make her out through the ice. The signal coming from her heart is muddled, unclear.

There is a commotion. They seem to be… fighting? And Larxene will show up any minute. Just as Sora is about to make his presence known, the girl with red braids collapses, and a third person—a tall man in a buckskin coat—enters the room. He calls her name—"Anna!" and bustles her away. Sora watches them take their leave of the castle. Larxene does not follow them. Sora breathes a sigh of relief. But it's not enough—even if Larxene doesn't find them, another agent of the Organization will. Making up his mind to keep this girl out of their hands and away from their evil plans, Sora tails them through the snow and trees all the way down the mountain. Larxene is still nowhere to be seen, but he knows he doesn't have long.

The girl is taken into another castle at the heart of the little town. This must be Arendelle. Sora follows what he senses of her heart and hides himself outside a nearby window. In the short time between leaving the last castle and entering this one, she seems to have become very sick. Her heart's pulse is there—but it's weaker. It weakens further by the second.

Sora waits until she is alone. Then, he lets himself in through the window, black cloak flowing silently over the windowsill. The girl is curled up on a small loveseat, half-conscious, her skin and hair conspicuously pale. She shivers though the room is warmed by a cheery fireplace. Sora lays his hand on her shoulder and feels dread crawl all the way up her arm. She is not well. He tries to summon a Curaga spell to heal her, but nothing happens. He's lost his spells as well as his keyblade. Very briefly, it occurs to him that Larxene almost certainly has an elixir or potion on her person. But he pushes it out of his mind.

"Anna?" he whispers, remembering the name the man from before had used.

"Hans?" her gaze is unfocused.

"I'm here to help you, okay? Can I carry you?"

His eyes dart from the window to the door as he awaits her answer. After a long moment, she nods, her eyes sliding closed.

"Need… I need…" She can't quite form the words, and ends in a weak cough. Sora lifts her up as gingerly as he can. His body heat seems to quell her somewhat.

"Don't fall asleep," he warns her, moving towards the door to the hallway. It doesn't matter who sees them now. Anna will be long gone before news reaches anyone who could do anything about it.

"We're going to get you safe. Somewhere far away from here. Somewhere warm. You'll like the beach."

He nudges the door open with his boot, then starts down the hall. But as soon as he turns a corner, he sees something that makes him stop short.

"Well, well, well." Between him and the way outside stands the man in the shiny black helmet. "Look who's decided to run off with our princess."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Maybe the reason Hans didn't make it back is because he ran into a certain someone on the mountain?  
> If you are enjoying this fic I wrote (all for you!), please remember to leave a review and visit the official blog (kingdom-hearts-fic-writing.tumblr.com)! You can read the next chapter's preview, find bonus story notes, see scenes that didn't make it in, and share your own plot feedback and ideas!


	7. Threshold III

“Sorry,” the black-helmeted man says with a chuckle. “Looks like the Master doesn’t trust you enough to leave you on your own.” 

“The Master didn’t think there was a Princess of Heart here,” Sora says. He fights the urge to walk backwards as the man steps closer. Behind him, Sora catches a glimpse of another cloaked figure, hood pulled up.

“So lucky you came along with Larxene, then, wasn’t it? Like she could have done it alone.”

Sora bit back an angry retort in Larxene’s defense. “Yeah, lucky.”

“Or maybe,” the man muses, “you’re betraying us? Running off with that vital piece of our plan in hopes that we’ll never find it?”

Sora fights to keep his cool. He’s never been a good liar. “What makes you think I’m betraying you? I have the Princess of Heart right here, don’t I?”

“Oh, you’re not the traitorous, soft-hearted fool I took you for? Good. Hand her over, then.” The man holds out one arm, palm up, and crooks his fingers. 

Sora laughs nervously. Swallows. He readjusts Anna in his arms and walks down the narrow hallway towards the man.

Then he lashes out with a kick, lightning-fast, straight to the man’s stomach. 

The man is expecting it and blocks it handily. But by then, Sora is gone, sprinting back down the hall. He skids around the corner into the smoky room and leaps out the window through which he came. 

“Sorry! Hold on!” he tells Anna as he sprints through the streets.

The shadows in the streets around him begin to move and pulse as he runs. Creatures are born from the shade with their bright eyes fixed on him and Anna. They look like Heartless—lurch out at him like Heartless—but they wear a different symbol. They distract Sora so much that he almost runs straight off the path at a fork in the road. He skids to one side, taking a left, and presses his back up against a row of snow-covered stables. Despite all the commotion, Anna’s eyes are still closed. She’s handling it like a champion, but it can’t be good for her, and Sora knows it. He needs to find a safe place for her.

Just as he’s calculating his odds of making it out and past the mountain, one of the Heartless-adjacent creatures, a winged variety, dives him from above. Sora ducks and dodges away. Standing on the cobblestone path, he looks up to see the man standing on the roof of the stables. He snaps his fingers. A legion of creatures spawns from all sides—even inside the stables, as Sora hears the horses whinnying in fear.

The man laughs, cruel and jovial, and poises his fingers to snap again. “It’s a cool trick, right? If only you’d bothered to learn it.”

Sora tears down the road; this time, when he comes to a fork, he barrels past it straight into the snow. He has to put as much distance and as many obstacles between them possible. But weaving through these buildings feels like running through a maze, and the man could pop out from every corner. He needs a vantage point. He tightens his grip on Anna and, readying his whole body to spring, he leaps. 

He finds purchase on rooftop after rooftop, climbing until he can see half of Arendelle. He’s made his way out from the castle’s walls into the city’s mishmash of buildings and districts. Farther out, he traces a path with his eyes towards the frozen lake and the mountains beyond. He has just reached the zenith of his high jump when a shadow flickers in the corner of his vision. A black boot slams into his shoulder from above, rocketing him back down towards the earth. He’s only able to half-right himself, protecting Anna as he collides with the roof of a fish vendor’s stall. He takes the brunt of the blow with his back. He and Anna land in a pile of powdery snow below. The smaller, hooded figure lands silently in front of them. The helmeted man lands behind them. 

The masked man strolls closer, leisurely. “Nice shot, puppet.”

Sora, panting, struggles to right himself. Anna shivers horribly; she’s so cold his hands have gone numb through his gloves. If he could just find a way to get her out of this frozen nightmare—if they would just get out of his way—

“Stay down,” the man says.

“She needs help,” Sora says. “You’re in the way!” That dark rage encroaches on his senses again. Before he’s risen fully to his feet—before the masked man fully realizes what’s happened—Sora is sliding on the icy ground towards the smaller hooded figure. The figure is quick enough to throw up a block, but not heavy enough to take the full brunt of Sora’s weight as he slams through her, bowling her over. The slide doesn’t take him much farther, but it’s far enough to give him the edge he needs to get away.

He finds shelter outside the town in the hull of a cargo ship stuck fast in the icy bay. When he sets Anna down, she’s wide awake. 

“I need to find— I need Hans,” she says in a weak whisper. 

“We can find whatever you need,” Sora assures her. “We just need to wait here for a little bit, okay?”

Anna fights to stay lucid. She pushes herself up to her knees even though the effort leaves her wheezing. Sora reaches out to help her, but her big, expressive eyes and warm-hued hair suddenly remind him of Kairi so strongly that it knocks the wind out of him to imagine her in the same situation. He helps her right herself, then quickly excuses himself to check outside. He keeps low on the ship’s deck. Towards the town itself, he sees nothing. But when he peers out towards the mountain, he sees something else—a black coat standing out against the white snow, accented with a smear of bright, electric yellow. Larxene. Behind her walks a woman in a pale blue dress. 

“Elsa?”

Sora whirls around to see Anna swaying on the deck of the ship. She cups her hands around her mouth.

“ _Elsa!_ ”

The woman perks up, seeing them. The wind carries back her response: _Anna!_

A desperately happy grin covers Anna’s face. Sora panics. They’ve been seen. They have to get away. He grabs Anna’s shoulders. “Anna, listen to me. If they find you, they’re going to…”

He trails off, feeling her go cold. Her hair and clothes still in the wind. He blinks, and her skin and eyes are translucent blue. Where Anna once stood now stands her body—a frozen statue.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I bet you can guess where this is going.


	8. Threshold IV

When she sees Anna’s fate, Elsa lets out a strangled cry. She drops to her knees. The snowstorm around her goes absolutely still; snowflakes hang in the air as if Stopga’d. Larxene’s face goes blank. Then, she tilts her face eerily towards Sora. Her eyes ask one piercing question: _What have you done?_

Sora reaches towards Anna’s hand as if to pull her free of her icy shell. He tugs; Anna is silent and unyielding. Sora’s stomach drops through the floor. 

Then, he senses the darkness come. Overwhelming darkness. An all-encompassing surge of despair swallowing Elsa’s heart—it echoes the night Riku plunged the Destiny Islands into the abyss. A pool of darkness opens wide under Elsa’s crumpled form. Larxene sees it, too. She summons a throwing blade in her hand and bolts towards her. 

“No!” Sora shouts. 

A blizzard explodes out of Elsa’s form, throwing Larxene back like a rag doll. Tiny ice shards like little glass daggers bear down on her. Larxene just catches herself and skids backward on the ice, deflecting most of the shards. Those that make it through her guard cut hairline rips in her cloak, hair, and skin.

Elsa’s despair—now a very real and tangible force—wraps her in a frosty black cocoon. For a moment, it seems the weight of her own darkness will crush her in this shell; then, it shatters. In a whirlwind of wings and snow, a huge, vicious beast of a Heartless breaks free. Its six black-feathered wings spread out against the gray morning sky, and it lets loose a grief-filled scream.

Larxene lay flat against the ice underneath the huge avian Heartless, pinned down by the wind of its beating wings alone. Without thinking, Sora dashes towards her just as Elsa’s Heartless dives for him. 

Sora drops to his knees and slides under the bird. Its talons pass inches from his ear. They strike the frozen lake with such force that, with an ear-splitting explosion, it craters into a blue valley of solid sea ice. Sora reaches Larxene just as the ice drops out from underneath her. He grabs her wrist in one hand and grips the upper rim of the ice with the other to keep her from sliding closer to Elsa’s Heartless.

“What happened to her?” Sora calls against the howling wind. “I didn’t think pure hearts could turn into Heartless!” 

“She’s clearly not as _pure_ as we thought!” Larxene bites back. She stabs her throwing knife into the ice to keep herself in place. 

“Did she give up her light? Is that why this is happening?” Sora’s head spins. This is his fault. He has to make it right. He can’t let Larxene kill her, Heartless or not.

The ship where Anna stands precariously on the rim of the ice bowl. Elsa’s Heartless lands there, massive tail feathers fanning out as the ship teeters. A low, pitiful coo reverberates deep in the bird’s chest. Then, she draws herself up to full height and wails her ear-shattering grief. She beats all six wings and rises, searching for them. When she sees them dangling there, she turns her huge wings on them, materializing great cutting blades of ice and wind out of the air. Sora braces himself to take the brunt of it.

A dark blur appears in front of him and deflects the ice shards with a sweeping parry. It’s the smaller cloaked figure from earlier. The black-helmeted man appears a moment later out of thin air, as he tears through a portal over the bird’s head and drops down on her hard. 

The hooded figure jumps to the edge where Sora is holding on with one hand and pulls him up. As soon as he finds his footing, he bends to pull Larxene up with him. But she frees her hand from Sora’s grip and slides down the side of the ice bowl. 

“Wait! This is wrong!” He moves to go after her, but the hooded figure pulls him back by the sleeve. 

“I know you can’t fight,” the figure says quietly. Her voice jolts Sora to the bone, as if it were something he’d hear in a dream before waking up.

He swallows a sudden lump in his throat. “What do you mean?”

“You can’t fight,” she says. She raises her hand and summons a broken keyblade. His keyblade. The Kingdom Key.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wish Elsa had played a bigger part in KH3 Arendelle. Wouldn’t she make a cool final boss?


	9. Threshold V

Sora is helpless as the so-called puppet leaves him and joins the others to fight Elsa’s Heartless. They finish it off soon enough. The bird’s core—formerly Elsa’s heart—disappears into thin air without a trace, without one shred of evidence it had ever been anything close to a pure heart. 

Sora has just made his way to Anna when Larxene is suddenly there, too, pushing him aside to see the ice statue that remains of Anna. Her hands hover near the girl’s frozen face, shaking. 

“This was my one chance.” She rounds on Sora. “This is worse than failure! The old man will think we’re incompetent!”

“Move,” the helmeted man deadpans and shoulders past Sora and her. He holds his hands out as if meditating over Anna’s form. 

Snow hangs in the air, totally still once again. 

“Her heart is still there,” the man says. “It’s in stasis. The Master might be able to extract it and save her… more or less.” He shrugs, like it doesn’t matter to him either way. “Or her heart will fade away and be lost. Toss up.”

Sora’s fingers remain numb despite the flush of heated anger that rolls through him. “You can’t just—”

“This is your fault. She wouldn’t be in this position if _you_ ” —Larxene jabs him in the collarbone— “had just captured her like you were supposed to. What were you doing all the way out here, huh? Were you sneaking off?”

“The kid was helping us.”

Sora’s intended retort dies in his throat, and he stares at the person who spoke—the helmeted man. 

Larxene crosses her arms, similarly skeptical. “Oh, yeah?”

The man nods towards Anna. “She ran off and ended up here. We caught wind of it and he helped us track her down. Hey,” he adds tonelessly, “we should probably get her back to the Master before it’s too late. If it’s not already.”

Larxene glares at him, then at Sora. “You’d better hope she survives. If her heart disappears, we’ll be back to square one. If that happens, you’d better pick a god and pray for a new partner next time. Give her to me,” she snaps at the helmeted man, taking hold of Anna’s shoulders. A portal of shadows gathers underneath her. “You’re not taking the credit away from me again.”

Then, she’s gone. Sora is left alone on the destroyed frozen harbor with the two Seekers of Darkness who he had, just prior, been fighting.

“You really made a mess of things, didn’t you? That one was right.” The man nods at the place from which Larxene had just vanished. “This is your fault.”

Awful guilt gnaws at Sora’s gut. “I… I don’t understand what happened.”

“My guess is, whatever that one saw” —the man gestures vaguely to where Elsa stood when she turned— “turned the pure stuff in her heart into despair. The more hope you have, the more there is to lose, I’d guess.” 

Larxene’s earlier words echo through Sora’s head: _when you put someone on a pedestal, they have a long way to fall._ They strike Sora like the sharp end of a sword. He caused this. He kept Anna from the people who could have helped her.

“I just wanted to keep Anna out of danger,” Sora says.

“That’s what you get. You resist Master’s plan and it bites you in the ass. The truth is—and this is gonna hurt for you—the Master has no interest in hurting those pure-heart girls. Just borrowing their hearts. Of course, now that you’ve had your say, if our princess here is lucky enough to return home one day, she’ll be coming back to a world with one fewer pure-heart in it. Someone she loved, sounds like.” He crosses his arms. “It’s Vanitas, by the way. My name.”

“Oh. Sorry, right. I’m Sora.”

“Sure you are.”

Sora stares for a moment. There is something strangely familiar about this man. Then he sees the smaller hooded figure from the corner of his eye and remembers she’s there. He turns to her and, on impulse, holds out his hand awkwardly. “Um, hey there. Thanks for saving me. Also, sorry for body-slamming you earlier.” 

She doesn’t move. 

“Don’t bother,” Vanitas says. “It won’t respond. It’s an incomplete replica.”

“Huh?” Instinctively, Sora ducks slightly to per at her face from under her hood. She avoids his gaze. He can’t help but wonder if she hates him, too. One fewer friend he’s made so far.

“Say.” Vanitas taps his helmet with his pointer finger as if tapping his lip in thought. “I thought pure hearts couldn’t turn into Heartless. Isn’t that the strangest thing?”

“She wasn’t a Princess of Heart, then,” Sora says.

“Maybe. Or maybe we don’t know as much about hearts as we think we know.” Now he taps his temple. “Even the most hopeful people are capable of being sad. Just someone is a great hero doesn’t mean they’re not also capable of great darkness. You’ve gotta have the highs before you can understand the lows. I think you of all people would know that, wouldn’t you, Ventus?”

“What was that?” Sora asks, perplexed. 

Vanitas summons a corridor of darkness. “Don’t worry. I won’t tell the Master or anyone that you tried to escape and sabotage his precious plan.” 

The smaller figure disappears into the corridor. Sora lags behind, peering at the blank mask where Vanitas’ face should be. “Why?”

“Because I enjoyed our game of tag." Sora hears a vicious smile in his voice. "If the Master locks you up, I won’t be able to play with you anymore.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Vanitas. Misunderstood or evil?


	10. Sea Meets Sky I

When Sora and Riku returned to the Destiny Islands after everything—after Roxas, after Xemnas, after Ansem the Wise—Kairi saw them fall from the sky into the sea. 

“We’re back,” Sora said. 

The storm of guilt and uncertainty that had possessed her since returning from the World That Never Was evaporated like morning rain. She promised herself she would never let her boys out of her sight again.

“You’re home,” she replied. 

It could have been their happy ending. For a few blissful weeks, it was. Things returned to relative normalcy. Sure, they were all a little different—stronger and leaner, a little more world-wearied and wise. But they were still kids. Just fifteen. Young enough to bounce back from the trauma of their separation. Young enough to remember that there was a life for them where they didn’t have to fight for their survival every single day. 

But there was a shift in their dynamics. Something stirred in Kairi’s subconscious, imperceptible until it was right in front of her. 

Sora and Riku had begun to squabble and compete, rivalry mysteriously rekindled. It usually happened during the trio’s morning walks down the beach. On this particular morning, Kairi walked in the shallow surf, sandals in hand until one dropped accidentally into the water. The waves pulled it out into deeper water before she could grab it. Luckily, Sora had been quick to wade out and catch it before it floated away. But as they were in the middle of one of their little competitions, Riku snatched it, and conflict ensued over who got to return it. 

“I had it first!”

“Doesn’t matter if you’re too slow to keep it.”

Kairi sighed through her nose. “There hasn’t been a moment of peace with you two around, lately! You’re acting just the same as when we were kids.”

Sora laughed. “Come on, you don’t like it?”

Kairi couldn’t help but smile at his big, earnest eyes and how his emotions rolled this way and that with such ease. “I guess I kind of like it.”

“Good, because there would be no point in doing it otherwise,” Riku said dryly. He cuffed Sora over the head with the sandal in his hand.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Kairi asked. 

Riku and Sora glanced at each other, both hesitating. 

“… Oh, no, I’m not saying it.” Riku slapped his palm over the water and splashed it up at both of them. This was met by two indignant shouts. 

Sora reached out as if to loop his arm around Riku’s neck and wrestle him down, but Riku ducked under it. He laced his hands behind his head and waded off to a safer distance. 

“Riku…!” Sora’s eyes darted from him to Kairi. “Uh… well…” He laughed a cheesy, nervous laugh.

Kairi’s face warmed. “ _So_ ra!”

“O-Okay! Well…” His resolve to keep his secrets always seemed to dissolve when she put the slightest pressure on him. “The thing is… we only ever decided to be rivals because of you. To compete for who… got to be with you.” He scratched the back of his head, grinning sheepishly.

Kairi’s mind went blank. Her blush deepened until she was sure her face was strawberry red. She looked between the two boys—even Riku, back half-turned, looked downright guilty—and yet he was so serious, as if intent to hear her answer to the question implied.

Their rivalry had always seemed so utterly characteristic of their friendship. It stretched all the way back to the beginning—way back to when they had met her for the first time. She thought that competition was what had always pushed them to be better. It was all because of her? 

Sora’s nervousness turned to concern. “Kairi, are you okay?”

Kairi pressed the heels of her hands to her burning cheeks in a fruitless effort to hide her raging emotions. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“We were dumb kids. It was hard to break the habit,” Riku mumbled. 

There were a series of splashes and Riku _oof_ ed and pitched forward when something—someone, namely Kairi—took a sudden sloshing leap at his back. He tilted into the water under the force of her unexpected tackle, his head disappearing under the waves for a moment. When he resurfaced, Kairi punched him halfheartedly in the chest

“You’re still dumb! You big dumb—”

“Hey, wait!” Sora splashed over and tried to pull her off of Riku. Kairi pitched backwards into him unexpectedly, then grabbed his arms and pulled all three of them under the water again. 

When they surfaced, all three were soaking wet, from their hair to their socks. 

Riku slicked his too-long hair out of his face, stupefied. “Was that…”

Sora shook his spiky locks. “Did she kiss you, too?!”

Kairi dragged her soaked self out of the surf and onto the sand. Her face was still burning hot, but at least she was vindicated. She flopped down onto the hot sand and, when Sora and Riku were close enough, she dragged them down to sit on both sides of her. She pressed a kiss to Sora’s left cheek and Riku’s right. She was still a little indignant about their keeping secrets, but it gave way to cautious optimism about breaking this new ground. She had loved them both for so long, but had never imagined that she was more than a tertiary character in their story. 

“I can’t believe I missed out,” she said. “All this time.”

“What do you mean?” Sora asked. 

Riku laughed. “You’re as dense as she is.”

It was a few days later during that same shoreline walk that Riku fell in step with her. Sora had shot up ahead, boundless with energy as ever. She recognized the same wistful, far-away look on Riku face that she had seen many times before—and now she recognized it.

“When you love someone…” he began, “And you’re not sure if they love you the same way you love them…”

She smiled wide. “Sora loves you just the way you want him to,” she told him.

And it would have been, for the three of them, the beginning of a journey into a new and unexplored world. But then, that letter King Mickey washed ashore. 

And now, Sora wasn’t coming back.

* * *

_How could you, Sora?_

In the last month, Kairi has wondered this ten thousand times. _How could you do this to us? How could you hurt Riku? How could we not know the person you really are?_

She holds a letter in her hands. She has written a dozen letters to Sora, full of anger, betrayal, and hurt. This one, she did not write. This one arrived for her. Her name is written in a strange hand on the back of the envelope. The paper is thin and yellow, with pulpy veins running through it like old parchment. This letter has not come from within Merlin’s secret training ground, the Secret Forest—only she and Lea are here. It appeared here without a messenger of any kind on the hill where she and Lea sit and share ice cream.

The letter details Sora’s departure and betrayal. It paints a vivid image of Riku’s demise—but she reminds herself this may still be false. Sora couldn’t kill someone he loves, no matter what force possesses him. She repeats this as many times as she needs to. 

She reads the letter over and over. She already knows the story forwards and backwards through the account King Mickey gave before he left, alone, in search of Master Aqua. The letter twists the proverbial knife in the wounds Sora left, speaking of a boy whose heart was all too open to the darkness, who left the people he loved to follow his inner demons—that he went willingly, after turning on Riku. 

In lieu of a signature, scrawled at the bottom of the letter, is a message: _He is no friend to you anymore._

She thinks first that whoever printed her name at the top of this itemized account of Sora’s betrayal is playing a cruel joke on her. Then, she flips the letter over. On the back are scientific notes and schematics so tiny and densely packed onto the page that she can’t read them without a magnifying glass. Though she doesn’t know much about the science of hearts and heartless, a number of diagrams and labels catch her eye. As does another scrawled note: _For Roxas._

The schematics are instructions on how to create a Replica.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy SoKai week! A few bonus notes on this chapter are available on the story's blog.


	11. Sea Meets Sky II

"You said you received these schematics in a letter?" Ienzo's modulated voice seeps out of the speakers on Kairi's gummiphone. His face stares out of the screen at the letter she holds up to the front-facing camera. She's never seen him look so shocked.

"A letter with no address. It appeared out of nowhere."

"I've seen bits and pieces of these notes before. They're far too complicated to recreate from memory, but I'd know them anywhere. They're the real thing."

"It says 'For Roxas.'" Kairi underlines the scrawled writing with her fingernail. "That has to mean something. Whoever wrote this message wants to see Roxas return." _We would know if we could just talk to Sora_ , she thinks. _He has to be behind this_.

Ienzo glances down at the message, but his eyes quickly return to the notes above. "That would be one motive—albeit a very strange one for anyone on the short list of people with access to these instructions. Only a few members of Organization XIII could have stolen this. This is absolutely unprecedented."

Yen Sid's voice echoes out from over Kairi's shoulder. He stands near the hilltop boulder on which, just this morning, the letter had appeared. "It is possible that an outsider stole these plans from the Organization and sent them here. Or perhaps that there is a double agent in the Organization itself." Yen Sid's beady eyes darken, his mouth a flat line.

"It has to be Riku or Sora," Kairi says with great finality. "It has to be. Sora is the only one with enough reason to act as a double agent and he wants Roxas freed. And Riku is helping him."

"I see where you're coming from, Kairi," Ienzo says. "Unfortunately, I believe the handwriting on those instructions are Even's—sorry, Vexen's. I'm very familiar with it, you see." A frown pulls his face down. "Perhaps he has aligned himself with Xehanort despite our recompletion. This is deeply troubling."

"But—why? Why would Vexen send us these instructions?"

"That is very hard to say. Since this knowledge comes from the Organization, it runs absolutely counter to Xehanort's plans for this information to fall into our hands. To be given knowledge of the replica-making process… well, it helps our cause far too much to be a mistake."

"Is it possible that this could be an elaborate trap?" Yen Sid asks.

"As far as traps go, it would be a terrible one," Ienzo says. "It would be like giving an experienced chef a recipe for a poisoned cake. As long as one understands the ingredients and the process—and I am quite familiar with them—it is easy to catch a tablespoon of rat poison in the icing, so to speak." He peers closer. "Not only that, but these notes speak to a process much farther along in development than I was aware of during my later time in the Organization. It's perfect. This is not only a recipe for Replicas—following these steps would yield a nigh-human vessel."

Kairi can't stop the burn of frustration from singing her words. Why aren't they listening? "This doesn't make any sense unless Sora is behind it! The timing is too perfect. And Roxas? Come on." She turns to Yen Sid. "I want to investigate."

Yen Sid speaks carefully. "Sora's involvement is… possible. However, we have very slim evidence. As such, we must have caution. We are at a great disadvantage against the Seekers of Darkness. We cannot afford to move our pieces as aggressively as Xehanort can." Yen Sid's voice turns sympathetic. "I apologize, my girl. You must remain here for now and continue your training."

 _They aren't listening to me_. Kairi feels hot, angry tears gather in the corners of her eyes. She blinks them away furiously. "I don't want to resume my training."

"We have no choice. You must be protected—not only as one of the precious few Guardians of Light, but as a Princess of Heart."

"But someone _knows I'm here_ ," she protests. "Someone found a way to slip this letter into the Secret Forest under Merlin's radar, didn't they? Who's to say it wasn't a test, and the whole Organization won't come walking up this hill two hours from now?"

Yen Sid nods. "Yes, this is troubling. You and Lea will return with me to my tower for now. We will gather the remaining Guardians of Light there—Mickey will return with Master Aqua and Ventus soon, with any luck. Then, when the time is right, we will make our move on the Seekers of Darkness." Uncharacteristically, he lays an apologetic hand on her head. "We will uncover the truth about Sora. I promise."

He turns to leave, summoning a teleportation spell with a wave of his hand. Kairi feels tears streak down her cheeks. After years of waiting and watching Sora and Riku from afar, always protected and feeling so helpless from a distance, she vowed never to let it happen again.

And now that she has a chance to help, she's trapped again.

In her anger, she turns away and comes face to face with Lea. The sight of her tear-streaked face paints him shocked.

"Kairi, what's happened?"

Then, Yen Sid snaps his fingers, and they all vanish.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A huge windstorm hit my city and it knocked electricity/power out for a huge chunk of the city last night, me included. Couldn't even access my chapters to work on them, much less post!
> 
> Do you agree with Kairi? Or do you think Yen Sid is in the right?


	12. Sea Meets Sky III

Yen Sid gives Kairi the highest room in the tallest of his towers—the perfect place to keep a princess. She stands with her back to the window, staring down at her yet-unpacked things. Her books, pens, elixirs, keepsakes.

She does not intend to unpack.

_Why are you running off?_ Naminé's voice whispers in her mind. _Yen Sid is right. You're too important to throw caution to the wind like this._

"Maybe," Kairi admits aloud. "But every time I've needed their help, Sora and Riku fought for me. Now they need help. It would be wrong for me to hide and wait, hoping someone else will deal with it. They wouldn't dream of doing that if it were my life on the line again."

_I wish I was as brave as you,_ Naminé says. _But I'm scared that we're wrong about Sora. I'm scared he's turning into a monster._

Kairi closes her eyes. She doesn't feel brave. She feels sick with anxiety.

"I love Sora," Kairi says quietly. "I believe in him."

_You love Riku, too, and Sora hurt him. Don't you want to do right by him?_

"Riku wouldn't want me to resent Sora for this. It's not his fault."

_We can love Sora without loving his demons. We've turned King Mickey's story over a thousand times in our minds, searching for loose threads—searching for some other way to explain how Sora and Riku could vanish like this without a single word of explanation._

The thought squeezes Kairi's chest painfully.

_He could still come back to us,_ Naminé whispers. _We just have to wait a little longer._

"Not this time. I'm not waiting around to get kidnapped again. I'll find Sora and Riku and drag them back home myself if I have to."

"Oh, will you now?"

Kairi jumps, jerking back to reality at Lea's voice. She looks up to see him leaning in the open doorway. He wears his standard aloof demeanor, but the concern on his face is apparent just under the surface. She stutters out half an explanation before he interrupts.

"Striking off on your own, huh?"

She finds herself searching his face for any indication of protest, or teasing, or disdain. But then she catches herself, turning her back on him before her big, dumb, too-emotional heart can overwhelm her with sympathy for the people she's leaving behind. "I know I can't hide from the Seekers of Darkness forever—not even here." She stuffs a few things into her backpack without really seeing them.

"And that's why you're leaving?"

"Yes."

"You know, I don't believe that for a second."

She peeks over her shoulder at him, trying to summon a glare.

"I mean, sure—if Xehanort's cronies find you, they'll be that much closer to plunging the universe into darkness." Lea strolls into the room, inspecting a few of the baubles that cover all surfaces of the room—crystal balls, snipe feathers, potted herbs of all colors. The only surface uncovered is the bed, where Axel falls back and kicks his feet up, lacing his fingers behind his head with a shrug. "But I think you're doing this for Sora and Riku. Not the universe."

"The two people I love most are somewhere out there, and nobody knows what happened to them or why. Not even the King. I want answers." She looks down. "Is that… selfish?"

"It's very human, if you ask me." He stares up at the ceiling, which is painted to resemble a star-studded night sky. "But I'd say I'm jaded. I've stood by as too many worlds slip into darkness. I've ripped the hearts out of more people than I care to remember."

"But you were a Nobody."

"Even with my heart present and accounted for, I'd plunge the universe into darkness if it meant bringing Roxas back," he admits, resting a hand absently on his chest.

She smiles. "That's very sweet, if… dark."

He smiles, a little—it's a sad smile. She's seen it a dozen times, and been prompted every time to ask him what's wrong. His answer was always the same: she's said something that reminds of him of someone, but he can't remember who.

He sits up. "Nice haircut," he says, nodding to her newly cropped hair.

She brushes a few strands behind her ear. "I'll miss you, Lea."

"I thought I told you, it's Axel." He smirks crookedly. Then he stands and puts a reassuring hand on her shoulder. "Are you sure this is what you want, Kairi?"

"I'm sure."

"You look sad."

She tips forward, forehead meeting his chest, and sniffles quietly. Her lashes turn wet. When she wraps her arms around him in a weak hug, he returns it.

"Well," he muses, "I have a few too many scars from our sparring sessions to think you won't make it far by yourself."

"I wouldn't have given you so many scars if you fought me without holding back," she reminds him. He's always been protective of her, but could never articulate why. She used to think it was misplaced guilt for the time he kidnapped her, but lately, she's wondered if it has something to do with that mysterious, unremembered person of whom she reminds him so much.

"Sorry—I can't shake this nagging feeling you'll want a friend when you're out there in the universe."

She looks up at him, forgetting what a mess she is at the moment. "Lea, no! You'll get in trouble. If you leave now, Yen Sid might not let you keep training to become a keyblade master."

He shrugs. "Big deal. I'll just tell him you kidnapped me. Besides, I wouldn't be much of a keyblade master if I didn't do my damnedest to protect someone who, frankly, is the most important Guardian we have left, not to mention a Princess of Heart. Think of all the brownie points I'll score for that." He pulls back and ruffles her hair.

"If the Seekers of Darkness catch you, they'll turn you back into a Nobody. Or worse!"

He scoffs. "Their worst ain't jack. And anyway" —he glances aside and looks out the tower's window, up at the thousands of stars just as a comet streaks by— "I have my own destiny to track down out there."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the lack of updates for the last few days! As of this update, I will no longer be updating every single day. I originally envisioned chapters for this to be much shorter (~400-600 words), and since this just hasn't been the case, I need a little time to catch my breath and do the writing and editing that happens for each chapter. I'm not willing to cut chapter length at the cost of cutting quality, too.
> 
> Updates will continue to be frequent, however! Remember to check out the story's blog (kingdom-hearts-fic-writing.tumblr.com) to find out more about what future updates will be like.
> 
> Stay safe everyone!


	13. Mirrors I

When Riku comes to in an unfamiliar world, he clutches the Kingdom Key in his hand. He stares up at a cave ceiling that glimmers with exposed jewels like cut glass.

The open wound at his ribs throbs painfully with his heartbeat. His temples pound. His throat burns with thirst. He can't think. Can't move.

Somehow, he recognizes the Kingdom Key—or it recognizes him—and tries to snatch a Cure spell from its magic reserves. The keyblade refuses. He tries again. Is refused, again. He focuses, gathers the distant pieces of his awareness, and tries once more time—this time asking for its help. The sounds of his labored breathing echo through the cave. The keyblade finally grants him a short burst of healing energy. He muffles a cry of pain as it eats through the injury in his torso. But once the green glow fades, he finds he can push himself into a sitting position. He puts his hand to his ribs and feels the torn skin. Still slick, but no longer bleeding. The patch job isn't perfect. He will need a more practiced mage to deal what's left of the wound. When he stands, a sharp ache spreads through his body.

He limps outside, still clutching the keyblade. He's afraid to desummon it for fear it won't return, and it's the only thing he has left of Sora.

The sky is twilight. Outside, in the sleepy green hills, he finds a thin, trickling stream and submerges his mouth and hands as he drinks. The taste is instinctively recognizable, just like the rest of this world. It looks like the cover of every fairy tale storybook on Mickey's royal bookshelves. Except no birds sing, no mice run through the underbrush, no colorful characters skip over hill and dale. The world is utterly devoid of life. He recalls Yen Sid's teachings: sleeping worlds, once freed, awaken slowly. The last parts of itself it regains are the living beings. This must be one such world.

As he gulps cold water, lucidity returns. He remembers the tunnel of darkness collapsing in on him and spiraling into the abyss between worlds. That must be how he ended up here. He raises his head, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand as he scans the horizon. It was just before that when Sora attacked him. He resists the urge to put his hand on the fresh wound again. The image of Sora's plunge into his erratic antiform makes guilt gnaw at his gut. It shouldn't have happened that way, he thinks. He should have protected Sora from the Organization. Now there's no way of knowing how deep in their claws are sunk in him.

 _I don't know how,_ he thinks, _but I'll fix this._

He looks back down into the water and sees a face—his own face, but not. Long silver hair and a cruel smile. Terror rips through Riku's chest when the reflection moves of its own volition.

A dull, ruthless chuckle echoes through the hills. A high-pitched ringing fills Riku's ears as the presence of something incorporeal and evil blankets the clearing. Riku rips himself from the riverbank, scrambling back until he finds his feet. It's the same presence he felt when Sora turned on him.

He sprints through the silent world in a panic, pressing on with darkness at his heels. There are no Heartless here, but they threaten to form in every shadow. The silhouette of a castle appears in the hills ahead. He heads for it, his pained, addled mind urging him towards the one thing resembling protection in the fairy-tale landscape.

A league of Heartless crop up between Riku and the castle just as he reaches its walls. A few Neoshadows and lots of Soldiers stand out from the cluster of Shadows. Riku takes up a defensive stance. In his hand, the Kingdom Key thrums, jerking itself towards the Heartless. He pulls back. The keyblade's movements aren't brutishly strong, but they are remarkably persistent. Riku's injuries pain him versus the small, twitchy movements. They threaten to throw him off balance. The Kingdom Key jerks him forward a millimeter at a time. It's fighting to match his movements to its old master's, to Sora's. Under the roar of the blood in his ears, he hears the Kingdom Key's war song in that strange voice unique to keyblades. It's an unfamiliar voice he last heard a long time ago.

The Heartless close in, and a Neoshadow lashes out near his blind spot. Its claws carve two valleys up his shoulder blades. He whirls around and drops the Kingdom Key's full wrath upon it, using the momentum to leap up and over. He lands on the other side of the group and slashes down on the helm of a Soldier. The hit—the strongest Riku can manage—isn't enough to banish it. He's forced to swipe, off-kilter, at a Shadow trying to capitalize on his inattention. Their instincts are to swarm.

The Kingdom Key wants to keep fighting, but Riku knows the Heartless are inexhaustible. So he does something the Kingdom Key's original owner never does—he runs.

He bangs through the door of the castle's wooden gate just as Heartless close in. He throws his weight against the door to slam it closed. The Heartless pound at the door, at the walls. They won't hold for long. Riku drags himself up the stairs to the castle's single, simple front door, but it doesn't budge. Cradling his injured ribs in frustration, feeling the Neoshadow's claw marks on his back grow wet, he searches for a hiding place in the castle's courtyard. A single door lies hidden in one corner; inside, narrow stairs lead underground. Riku takes the chance.

He weaves through a few gloomy hallways—half-waterway, half-dungeon—fighting the Kingdom Key's insistent jerking all the while. He finally sinks against the wall when he finds a dry patch of earth and catches his breath. His injury by Sora threatens to re-open as he gulps down air. With his mind dwelling on the pain and the bad memories attached to this injury in particular, the Heartless are bound to find him in no time. It's not the blood or pain they're attracted to. It's the fear, the hurt. He closes his eyes and pushes his awareness into his arms and legs, away from his injuries; he feels the cool, quiet earth at his back and underneath him. He meditates.

Still, the Kingdom Key remains in his hand, seething. It could be his only way back to Sora. Riku has too many things to apologize for to let it go yet. It's angry with him. It doesn't speak to him in words, but in that resonant song heard only in the mind. He knows its voice from that brief time before, when he held the Kingdom Key in his own hands. He had won it from Sora. Back then, he knew he was the Kingdom Key's true master. Sora, in Riku's own young mind, was a fool too blind to see he had chosen wrong when siding with the Light.

Riku's heart swells. It seems like just last week that he plunged the Destiny Islands into darkness. Sora's anger is still impossibly fresh in his mind. He remembers being a trapped in his own body—a prisoner of Ansem—as he and Sora fought bitterly. The Riku from back then would be pleased to know that Sora now stands on the side of the Darkness. He rests his head on the cold castle wall. _Things are very different now, aren't they?_ he thinks. Never in his wildest dreams would he have imagined this reversal of fortune. He was captured by the sudden urge to tell his younger self how short-sighted his ambitions had been.

That was the face he had seen reflected in the stream—himself, but younger, and with a look in his eye that brought Xehanort's Heartless to mind. But the cruelty on that face—the spite in his eyes—was fresh.

**"I know whom you seek."**

Riku's eyes fly open at the unfamiliar voice that echoes down the stone hallways. He's defensive, surveying the hallway on both sides of him. But after a minute of silence, nothing appears.

"Who are you?" Riku calls back. He keeps his voice low. There is no reply.

The Kingdom Key goes still. Riku's grip on its handle tightens.

"Who are you, and how do you know about Sora?" he calls out again, anger seeping into his voice.

**"I can show you that which you desire."**

Riku pinpoints the direction from which the voice has come. He edges down the hallway, on guard. Soon, he comes to some kind of threshold—a tall, iron-framed door, standing open. On the other side, he sees into the empty depths of the castle proper.

It could be a trap. It's likely to be a trap, and Riku knows it. But he can't afford not to follow every lead, especially when it mentions Sora in all but name. Especially when there are so many things he hasn't yet set right.

He follows the voice into the darkness of the abandoned palace.


	14. Mirrors II

When Riku finds a mirror, he's struck with momentary panic. After what he saw earlier, he has no desire to look at his own reflection again. He finds it—huge, round, and framed in swirls of gold—in an equally opulent chamber draped with so much purple silk it looks like the interior of a Agrabahan tent.

Apprehension gathers in his gut even as he gathers the courage to approach it. Arcane energy swirls invisibly on the mirror's surface. Strangely, even once he's standing in front of the obsidian surface, his reflection does not appear. It seems to be swallowed up by the mirror's supernatural darkness. He reaches out to touch the surface with his hand. His fingers stretch farther than they should. It feels like reaching through a waterfall in low gravity, like if he pushes a little harder, he'll break though an invisible barrier.

Then, a curved shape appears inside. It seems to float just on the other side of the mirror's surface, right past his fingers. When he pulls his hand back, it takes shape. A mask—something fit for theater or for a masquerade.

It's a magic mirror, he realizes, a device akin to an oracle or fortune-teller. He's been told they were commonplace in the fairy-tale worlds of before.

It speaks, the cut-out shapes of its eyes and mouth moving strangely, exaggerating its focus on him. It says, **"What do you seek?"**

"I… want to see Sora," Riku says.

 **"I do not see names,"** the face in the mirror replies. Its voice is definitely not human, but it's not threatening, either.

Riku thinks on this for a moment. "I want to see… the person I most need to find right now."

The mask disappears. Another image ripples into existence. A figure in black, still but standing, and covered in waves of shadow. _That has to be him,_ Riku thinks. _Will this take me there?_ He reaches up towards the figure—towards Sora—

The same vicious chuckle from before reverberates around the room. Riku spins around just in time to lock keyblades with himself—a version of himself several years younger, and clothed in a black Organization XIII cloak.

Riku grits his teeth. His injuries threaten to tear anew under the force of his other self's strength, pushing down from a leaping blow.

The other Riku saws his wing-shaped keyblade down in a way that contorts Riku's shoulder muscles, and they scream in agony. Then, the doppelgänger pushes off and lands across the room, in front of the only doorway.

It's a nightmare he's had a thousand time, seeing himself this way again. But this time, he can't wake up. The sheer force this doppelgänger exerts on the darkness all around them is visceral. Riku puts his hand to his ribs; when he pulls it away, it's spotted with fresh blood.

"Consider this a mercy," his younger self says, walking towards him, brandishing what has to be Soul Eater. "Sora is way beyond your reach, anyway."

Riku straightens up, Kingdom Key in hand. This match-up feels strangely familiar. "You have a lot to learn to be lecturing me that way, small fry."

His other self smirks joylessly. "Unfortunate last words."

His younger self gathers a burst of darkness in his fist and hurls it with extreme prejudice. Riku blocks, digging his heels in and bracing his off-hand on the flat of the Kingdom Key's blade. Flecks of shadowy energy jolt loose by the force of it and crash through the surface of the mirror. It sounds like glass shards hitting water.

His younger self summons and throws another volley of smaller spells. Each one bounces off Riku's weakening guard and splats into the floor, blossoming into its own small, low-level Heartless.

 _This must be what Sora felt like fighting me, years ago,_ Riku thinks. _I wonder what he'd say._ "Is that all you've got?" He calls back. "Why don't you fight me like a real swordsman?

His younger self scowls. "If I gave you all I've got, you'd be nothing but a little pile of ash under my heel. Even that would be more than a fake like you deserves. You're too pathetic to duel a real opponent." He steps closer, summoning another handful of shadows. "Do you think you survived that little encounter just to land here by accident?" A scoff. "Please. I kept the darkness from swallowing you because I wanted to destroy you myself. That's the end of it."

Another volley of shadows. Riku's shoes slide back with each blow, knees weakening. The Kingdom Key is livid. Every ounce of his strength goes into keeping the keyblade steady to block. He can't dodge out of the way with a weapon that wants to face its enemies head-on. To get out of the way, he'll have to let go of it, and he refuses to even think about that.

He tries to retort—he doesn't get many opportunities to drag his younger self through the proverbial mud, as he deserved—but it dies in his throat when a Soldier crops up almost underfoot and springs at him from well inside his range. He swipes belatedly at it and suffers a hard blow to the chest. He knocks it back with his fist and finishes it off with the Kingdom Key. He doesn't have a chance to recover when his younger self sees his opportunity and detonates a Dark Firaga in his face. Riku fights to push himself to his feet again, push through the pain, when electricity blasts down through him, searing his senses. His doppelgänger calls down Thundaga after Thundaga. Riku blacks out, and only comes to when the barrage is over. He can't move, can't see through the pain. His body fights to breathe. Even that small expanding of his chest is agony.

But even half-blind, the Kingdom Key twitches in his hand. Riku moves before he can convince himself to stay down. He digs the point of the keyblade into the floor and leans on it, struggling half-upright. He glares at his other self with all the venom he can muster, and it seems to give the younger Riku pause.

Sora's keyblade wants to fight, but this time, they both know it's hopeless. Summoning the last of his strength, Riku stands. Then, he falls backwards into the mirror.

He falls through the air. Down, down, down. The portal that was the mirror disappears somewhere far above him.

He lands with a splash in ankle-deep water. Darkness seeps in all around, and he realizes he's in the Realm of Darkness. Then he remembers who he's looking for. Sure enough, in the distance, that figure cloaked in shadows stands over the surface of the water. The water is undisturbed.

Riku splashes over. "Sora. Sora!" He reaches up—now waist-deep in the water—and grasps the figure's wrist.

The jolt of the darkness tingles through him. It's pure malevolence and spite. He can handle it. He's felt it before. But still, he has to concentrate to channel it away. As he does so, the shadows cloaking Sora dissipate.

It's not Sora.

She lashes out and grips his wrist, prying his hand away from her arm. She's tall and wiry, and every instinct he has sharpens in alarm. Her eyes are the same cruel shade of yellow as Sora's were. Her gaze pins him in place like a mouse caught by a panther.

But somehow, her features are distinctive enough that he knows he should recognize her based on his masters' stories. Her clothes are tattered, and the blue in her hair has faded almost white, but suddenly he knows her name even without having seen her face. His heart sinks.

Master Aqua.


	15. Mirrors III

Aqua's eyes settle on the weapon in the boy's hand. That _key_.

She releases his wrist and brushes her fingers along the blade, feeling the latent energy arcing along it. The metal sings to her.

Then it disappears. Contact is lost. The ethereal voice goes silent as the keyblade is pulled away. The boy looks up at her, unease in his guarded posture. She fixes him with an unmoving stare, cold and silent.

"This keyblade," she says, voice low and creaking, "Who is its master?"

"Me," the boy says. Not without conviction. But it's too quick of an answer to be true.

The water around him ripples as he pulls away just enough to put a defensive buffer between them, but close enough that she could reach out and touch the tips of his white hair. Her gaze follows the key as it hovers in his grip parallel to the dark water.

She steps towards him wordlessly, walking on the surface of the water. He steps back, waves sloshing against his thighs.

"You're Master Aqua, aren't you?" he asks.

The name bears bad memories. "I am nothing and no one."

"My name is Riku. I want to help you."

She walks towards him; he walks away. His backward steps take him towards the shore. Whereas the water betrays Riku's jerking movements, her own do not leave even a ripple.

He has just begun to rise onto the shore when his heel catches the sand. She lashes out and grabs the teeth of the keyblade. Her gloved palm, pressed against the edge of the blade, holds his weight. She expects him to let go and is dully surprised when he does not. His fall twists the keyblade's edge enough to cut through her leather glove. Water sloshes around his ankles, and it begins to smell coppery. She pulls the key closer to her, dragging Riku with it.

With her bare palm resting against the blade, the key sings to her again. It floods her numbed body with forgotten emotions—relics of her old life. They are a shock of fire against a bed of napalm. Vitality buzzes into her fingertips. Her palm aches for her own lost keyblade.

The key latches onto this feeling. It promises to lead her out of the Realm of Darkness if she will only return it to its real master.

Then Riku gains his footing and re-grips the keyblade with both hands. "Let go," he says. "I don't want to hurt you."

"I remember this keyblade," she says. "It had a sibling."

"Mickey's keyblade," he agrees. Hearing that name rewards her with a vision of the keyblade that originated from this very realm, and a red-tinged image of its master.

Her grip tightens, cold fire kindling in her corrupted heart.

"Please," the boy pleads. "I understand what it is to have darkness in your head, controlling you."

She stares down at him without expression. Idly, her thumb creeps down the keyblade's shaft and towards the handle. "Oh?"

"You've been fighting shadows down here for so long you don't remember what it's like to feel safe. You're weak, tired. Trapped. Doubting your own mind. It feels like no matter how long you run, it won't matter because you have nowhere to run to." A tiny, sardonic smile quirks up the corners of his mouth. "You think you might be a bad person after all. But nobody winds up in the Realm of Darkness because they have bad intentions. They end up here because they sacrificed too much of themselves."

This boy's face is familiar. She knows it from some time long ago, when it was younger, rounder, wider about the eyes. Here, now, this boy is almost the same age as she is. They stare at each other almost eye-to-eye despite his much lower footing.

"How could you know that?" she asks hollowly.

"Because I was trapped here, too." Even as the coppery smell intensifies, his grip on the keyblade strengthens. "I want to help you, Master Aqua. I mean it. I can take you home."

She stares down at him for a long moment. The Realm of Light. She desires it. She wants the world above to reach down and pull her free from this dark ocean. She longs to see the people whose memories she keeps locked in her heart in a vise-grip.

She longs to show them what they've made her.

She doesn't let go of the keyblade. This boy's silver hair, his face—they bear an uncanny resemblance to the man who sank her down into this dark ocean—to the monster Terra became. The sympathy in Riku's voice—or maybe it was pity—and his offers to help serve so perfectly to mock her last conversation with her old friend.

He tries to pull the keyblade away once more, and she tightens her grip.

"Why now?" she asks him. "If you understand my pain so perfectly, then why leave me here as long as you have?"

He turns grim. "We didn't know."

"Knowing would be an awful burden, I suppose," she says hollowly. She thinks of the last time she saw Terra, remembers the pressure of the Ream of Darkness pushing in on her as she shed her armor and keyblade to keep him safe, sending him back to the Realm of Light as she sank into the dark ocean. She feels the darkness inside her skin, hollowing her out on the inside. "What a terrible thing, to live with such guilt."

"No, Aqua! It's not like that. Nobody wanted this for you. I'm sorry."

"No you're not." Cold fury ignites to the end of her fingertips. "Not yet."

When she ignites in her palm a shot-lock blast of neon-bright dark energy, she sees the fear in his eyes. She fires. The light fades. When the dust settles, he's protected himself with one arm, breathing ragged. He refuses to unhand the keyblade.

"The darkness is controlling you!" he shouts. "You don't want this!"

" _You_ know _nothing_ about what I feel," she snarls. The very air around them ripples with the venom with which ten years of fear and spite have infected her. The hatred in her voice seems to take him aback, as if he doubts for the first time whether she really is this "Aqua" he thought she was.

Good. He should doubt everything he thinks he knows about her.

"Maybe you understand what it's like to be trapped in the darkness." She raises her hand again. It pulses with dark energy. "But you have no idea what it's like to be abandoned to it."

A sudden burst of thunder between them strikes down on the keyblade, and her hand is ripped away. Riku scrambles further back on the shore.

She narrows her eyes. "Take me to the Realm of Light."

Riku shakes his head. "I can't. Not like this." The swells of compassion in his voice have drained; all that remains is exhaustion. "Please, Aqua, don't do this. Find it in your heart to reject the darkness."

Her hands turn to fists at her sides. She will not lose that keyblade. Riku's pleas fall on deaf ears; all she hears is the key's promise to help her find her way back to the Realm of Light. It will help her find the ones who left her here. It will help her destroy them.

As if reading her thoughts, Riku says, "I won't fight you."

"Oh, you will," she says. "Or you'll perish."

* * *

Aqua holds her hand out. Nothing, at first. Then, the Kingdom Key shifts in Riku's own hand—not a twitch of its own free will, but in response to Aqua's call. Seized by panic, Riku grits his teeth and clamps both hands down on the handle. Its demands for Sora grow deafening. Riku realizes in horror that it sees Aqua—or whatever she has become—as a potential master. It wants to lead her back to Sora.

He has barely processed this when the Kingdom Key hums violently and begins to glow. The light detaches itself and forms a tall, white archway between them. A door—it was opening a door to the Realm of Light.

He fights the spell's completion with all his might. He can't let her through, not with the knowledge that the keyblade would take her right to Sora. Not after what he saw in her eyes.

The muscles in his arms tear under the force of the keyblade's will versus his own. The effort rips a shout of pain and fury out of his throat. But finally, he twists the keyblade backwards, locking the door to the Realm of Light away again. The light fades. He falls to his knees.

Then Aqua is on him, trying to force it out of his hands.

"Bring it back!" she snarls. Her lashes are wet.

"Aqua, please! Let me help you!"

Bit it falls on deaf ears, again. She isn't focused on him. She's focused on the keyblade.

With his strength sapped, he is quickly losing the battle of strength. He tries to call for aid from the keyblade, a Stopra spell, Blizzard, anything. Finally, it sparks weakly, reacting to his frantic energy. Sparks shoot up Aqua's arms. It stops her for only a moment.

When she comes at him again, he knows he won't be able to hold her off a second time.

He releases the Kingdom Key. It vanishes, fading back into its immaterial state. _Sorry, Sora. Guess I'll have to find my own way back._

When Aqua attacks again, she finds herself face-to-face with Way to Dawn. Her expression melts into disbelief, then rage. She lashes out. In a flash of dark magic laced with the fallen master's pain and anger, the Way to Dawn is severed cleanly in half. The force of the blow throws Riku back. He lands on wet sand and stars explode in front of his eyes. The gash in his ribs is torn back open.

He expects her to fall upon him again with more magic, more spells, more anger. But it doesn't come. He forces his chin up and looks through dim eyes to see her eyes closed. She is concentrating.

Light gathering in her fingertips. He swallows dryly.

_No, please,_ he begs silently.

Sora's Kingdom Key appears obediently in her hand.

His limbs scrabble mechanically to push himself to his feet, but the pain is overwhelming. He's weak, wounded, bleeding. The sand around him is stained red.

_Get up,_ a voice inside him says.

_You have to get up._

Aqua turns to look at him, but before he sees her eyes, something appears before him. A human shape. A boy, with long white hair. He looks like the other version of him, but different. Then the shape disappears.

Warmth ripples through him as though his body is waking up. His hand tingles, and he's dimly aware of the new, unbroken keyblade that appears there. Somehow, he finds the strength to stand.

_We can't let her find her way back_ , the voice inside him says, and Riku steels himself. Maybe he can't save Aqua from the darkness. But he can save the Realm of Light from her for just a little bit longer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to PresumablyAury, who shared a good idea in their comment! It helped me work a little more energy into this chapter's dialogue. c: 
> 
> About time to check in with Sora!


	16. Midnight Summer I

"Ah, she ventures out." Marluxia gestures down—far, far down—to the valley below them. He stands beside Sora atop a crooked old tower. Its shingles are so loose with mold that Sora eyes the edge, wondering how many false steps it would take to send him sliding over. Marluxia's gesture drags his gaze to the fields below, where a young woman with long, long, _long_ golden hair springs here and there through the valley, eagerly exploring. Sora aches to remember what it's like to have that kind of zeal for life.

"She's a Princess of Heart?" Sora says.

Marluxia nods. "Rapunzel is her name. She has been kept safe in this tower until today. We must make sure no harm comes to her."

Sora crosses his arms. "Whatever your deal is with her, keep me out of it. I don't want any part in this."

Rapunzel and her companion—a much less conspicuous man who seems to have reservations about this venture—disappear into the rock-and-ivy crevice that leads out into the rest of the world. Sora turns away. He slides out to the gutter and flips gracefully off the tower's roof. His dark cloak billows like a storm cloud behind him as he falls. He lands gracefully and noiselessly on the edge of the pond below.

He looks down at his reflection in the water. His hair is wilder than before, the natural highlights dulled after hiding under his cloak for so long. His cloak hangs off his body—the appetite he barely cultivated after his capture disappeared completely after his return from Arendelle. And his bloodshot yellow eyes—dark circles underneath—underscore just how little he's slept. He hardly remembers what it is to sleep and doesn't want to start now. All he sees in his better nightmares is Elsa's shape warping into that monster, is Anna turning into a statue of frosted blue glass. And no matter how he screams and fights, he can do nothing but relive it over and over.

In his worse nightmares, he sees Kairi turn to ice and Riku morph into a monster.

A heartless appears in the middle of a lake with a splash, startling Sora out of his thoughts. Then another three appear, then two more, until a small cluster are staring at him with bright yellow eyes. Sora backtracks. His hand twitches to call his keyblade out of instinct. It's not until his heels hit the base of the tower that he realizes what he's doing. The shadows draw closer, morbidly interested in this strange half-shadow creature he must appear to be. They bare their teeth and poise their scythelike limbs like scorpion tails.

Then, in a whirl of petals, Marluxia extinguishes them from above. Their ghostlike hearts rise up and away. Sora releases a breath he didn't realize he was holding. Marluxia, who has landed silently on the edge of the pond, turns around, eying the stick in Sora's hand—one Sora is just as surprised to see. He must have grabbed it to defend himself. He doesn't remember picking it up.

He flips it up in the air once or twice before tossing it aside, reminded of fond memories sword-fighting on the beach with Riku. Too bad Riku can't see him now—practically relegated to using a wooden sword again.

"I would advise you not to abandon your mission so suddenly," Marluxia tells him evenly. "Rapunzel's safety is of the utmost importance. Surely you can understand."

"Of course it's important," Sora retorts. "You want to capture her and use her heart."

"That does not mean we wish for any harm to come to the girl herself. What we seek is balance. Not violence."

Sora turns away, kicking a pebble into the water. "If you want her to be safe, then I don't think I should get near her." His gaze strays towards the cliff tops above and the thick forests just beyond. He hasn't given up on an escape yet. But even if he can get away, what then? He has no way back home without the Kingdom Key.

Seeing his stare, Marluxia says, "I wouldn't run off if I were you. The wilderness of this world is deceptively dangerous, especially to a boy without the barest means of defending himself."

"I can defend myself," Sora protests.

"Last we met, you summoned a keyblade to protect yourself. You seem much less willing to do so now. I gather something hinders you."

Sora groans. Another meeting he doesn't remember.

"You were more hotheaded then," Marluxia says.

"Yeah, well, I'm in the Organization now. I might as well act like a Nobody," Sora deadpans.

Marluxia scoffs. "Nobodies are not such simple creatures. Besides, living in the darkness does not smother one's inner fire. It merely redirects it. This new development with your keyblade is, admittedly, disappointing." Marluxia crosses his arms and taps his chin with a gloved knuckle. "I suppose I could send you back to Master Xehanort and deal with Rapunzel myself."

Sora suppresses a shudder at the thought of returning to the Keyblade Graveyard in less-than-stellar graces again. After Arendelle, Xehanort had a few choice words with him over losing Elsa's heart for good. More than Sora's pride was bruised.

"Then again," Marluxia muses, "I was so very _curious_ when I heard the news of your capture. Perhaps this gives us room to mend the… afflictions of our previous relationship."

Sora eyes him. Marluxia is tall and willowy, and his long, pastel-colored hair makes Sora think of wisteria petals. He moves with a grace that betrays a certain lack of humanity—he's unmistakably a Nobody. But Sora has witnessed him voice his disdain for the Organization and for Xehanort. _Maybe he wants to be here as much as I do,_ Sora thinks. _If we knew each other before… maybe we could be allies._

"Can you help me summon my keyblade?" Sora ventures.

A small, deliberate smile finds its way to Marluxia's face. "What an excellent idea."


	17. Midnight Summer II

Sora trails his would-be mentor through the curtain of ivy that hides Rapunzel's tower. The cave that bridges the valley with the meadow beyond is shaded even in broad daylight, and his and Marluxia's presence deepens the shadows. The veil between the Realms of Light and Shadow thins. It feels like Heartless could crop up underfoot at any moment. But they don't—Marluxia's presence makes them think twice. He leads Sora through the tunnel and into the greenest forest he's ever seen. Then, Marluxia turns around and snaps his fingers. Two Reaper-class Nobodies bloom into existence on cue. They dive Sora, sending him flying.

He flips back, lands haphazardly, and wipes a bloody lip with one hand. Cheap shot.

The Reapers dive again, scythes out. Sora is ready. He gets low and flips into a spinning handstand, throwing out a kick that slams one Reaper's helm sideways. He dodges the other and jumps into a back handspring. Both Reapers recover and fly in opposite directions in an attempt to flank him. The only place he can go is up. He flash-steps backwards and runs straight up one of the trees in their makeshift arena.

Before reaching the top, he vaults outward and kicks off a branch. He lets momentum swing him forward, and it carries his body up and over the swinging blade of one Reaper. He clears the Nobody completely and slams his feet square in the center of the other. It lands with its chest crushed between his feet and the ground. It releases a breathless trill, and then—poof—gone.

He almost ducks in time to avoid a swing from the other Reaper. The broad side of its scythe knocks him hard enough to make his ears ring. A familiar surge of adrenaline switches him into battle mode— _come on,_ he thinks, _let's do this!_ But the call to action receives no response from the Kingdom Key. The keyblade remains silent and hidden, too far away to hear him.

Something else calls back to him instead. Not the voice of a keyblade, but a low, distorted rattle. Something eldritch. The sound sets his teeth on edge and he shudders mid-attack.

The Reaper's scythe-arm slices him. Sora recovers haphazardly, and he fires off a barrage of weak Fire spells. It's the best he can do without his keyblade, but it works. The Reaper catches fire. Sora uses the distraction and grabs it by the offending scythe. He slams it into the nearest tree trunk, sinking its own blade into its stomach. It dissolves in his hands.

Marluxia surveys the scene. Then, he snaps his fingers and summons three more, along with a trio of Dusks.

But now Sora's body moves on instinct alone. He's almost unstoppable. Adrenaline spikes his heartbeat. It roars in his ears. He ricochets from Dusk to Reaper, tearing through them like wet paper. The risk of it—the threat of extinction—is just real enough to strike him with a thrill of fear. He flows from attack to attack, feeding off the dangerous exhilaration.

It's not until Sora blocks a Dusk's strike with one arm that he sees something isn't quite right. His hands pulse with a web of dark energy. Smoke clouds the edges of his vision.

Seconds later, he's wiped the last Dusk out of existence. He steals a glance down at his upturned palms. They look almost normal, save the translucent black veins fading from view in his fingertips. He clenches his hands into fists and takes a deep breath.

Then he spins around to face Marluxia, plastering a grin on his face. "How'd I do?"

"Considering the objective of the exercise?" Marluxia tightens his gloves pointedly. "Poorly."

Sora lets out a sound of frustration and sits down, legs and arms crossed. "I'm not getting any closer to summoning my keyblade. Every time I reach out, it just… disappears."

"Many of your fellow Organization members encountered similar difficulties with their Nobody weapons," Marluxia says.

"Really? No wonder they're treating me like a rookie."

"Indeed. For a so-called Organization, our peers have done precious little to help you find your footing here, haven't they?"

"I don't think Larxene knows how to summon a keyblade," Sora points out.

Marluxia smirks as if the thoughts strikes a long-dormant sense of humor. "Perhaps not. Still, the process is much the same. I imagine so, anyway," he adds smoothly. "You will find what you need inside yourself when you have adequate need for it."

Sora slowly uncrosses his arms, looking down at his closed fists. _I need you more than ever, and you won't come to me,_ he thinks. _Am I not worthy of you anymore?_

"Let us try again." Marluxia summons his scythe. "Perhaps a more worthy opponent will clear your sights."

Sora stands. "No, that's okay. I'm done."

"Oh? Is something wrong?"

"Just feeling tired," he lies.

Marluxia's scythe strikes the ground. A black aura spills forth from the spot and covers the ground in a rippling tar-like liquid. Thorny black brambles grow around the clearing, fencing them in. Sora stumbles as the ground turns marshy under his feet.

"We are not finished," Marluxia tells him.

That alarm rattle in Sora's ears returns, growing louder with strange, scattered whispers. Sora shivers. It's not coming from the spaces between worlds like the Kingdom Key's voice. It's coming from somewhere below—somewhere within himself.

Marluxia strides towards him. He holds his scythe loosely in one hand.

"This is a bad idea," Sora warns.

"Your fear makes you weak. Turn it to anger. Use it."

Marluxia swings. His scythe cuts through the air just as Sora rolls away from the attack. Splotches of darkness break out under the skin on his left hand as he regains his footing, and Sora cries out in pain, clutching his wrist. He fights to reign it in.

"A piece of Xehanort's soul resides in you, Sora. It will control you no matter what you do," Marluxia says.

Sora grits his teeth. The black energy under his skin begins to recede.

Marluxia shakes his head. "You believe your willpower is stronger than his. Understand that you will be worn down. As was I, as was Larxene, as was every single one of us, no matter the masks we wear to hide it. You can ignore the darkness inside you and let it fester…" A tangle of black thorns shoots up and ensnares Sora's unaffected hand, ripping it away from his infected one. "Or you can embrace all that it grants you."

Sora rips the thorny vines away, but they regrow in an instant. More vines snatch his free hand away. Others tangle in the bottom of his cloak. A thick strand appears around his neck and tightens, threatening to pull him to the ground. He crashes to his knees. It barely registers as he tries to block out the deafening rattle in his head. He resists the strange pull of the darkness with all his might. It's like something moving under his skin, tightening around his limbs and lungs and threatening to flood him from the inside out.

Seeing his resistance, Marluxia sighs and readies another attack. "You are a waste of potential. Throwing away such an exceptional opportunity, and for what? For _them_."

Sora's eyes snap open despite himself. He hears Riku's and Kairi's names implied in that disdainful tone. Anger sets fire to the flooding darkness in his limbs. "Don't talk about Riku and Kairi," he warns.

"Riku, of course," Marluxia muses. He circles around Sora slowly. "Another waste. Meant to wield the keyblade; then, an exceptional instrument of the darkness. Now he's cast them both aside, and where has it led him? To an early grave."

"No," Sora chokes out.

"Oh, yes. Did you not see how you disemboweled him?"

"You're lying!"

"And the girl, Kairi. Surely she knows it now, too—what you've done. What you are. She will never love you again, if she ever did."

"Shut your mouth!" Sora's shout is underscored by a deep hiss.

"Then show me the boy who Xehanort believes can control the darkness," Marluxia says quietly.

The rage rising in Sora's throat is overwhelming. He closes his eyes, fighting not to succumb.

The shadow of Marluxia's hand falls over his face through his eyelids, and then—

Then he opens his eyes and he is weightless. Below him, his Station of Awakening. The brightly-colored renderings of his best friends have dulled. Kairi's face is no longer visible, the stained-glass recreation of her half-turned away. Riku smiles up at him, but his eyes are obscured by scratched-up glass.

The glass picture stretches out before him as he falls towards it. No, he isn't falling—tendrils of smooth shadow drag him down. He struggles, shouting, and reaches down to tear at them. They whip at his hands, cutting them until he pulls away. Just as his feet are about to touch the glass, a swathe of shadow opens up underneath him. Far below, a mass—a giant mass, a cocoon of shadows. Something in Sora knows without a doubt that it wants to swallow him whole and screaming. But then, hands—three pairs of hands catch on his arms and shoulders scrabble to pull him free—

" _Fight it!_ "

Sora jolts. A chorus of voices snaps him to attention. The sound is not the same as the discordant whispers. It is three distinct voices, rising to shout at him from without. Finding his fighting instincts, Sora grabs the tendrils at his feet and blasts them with a Fire spell.

The cocoon below convulses and shrieks a teeth-grating scream. For a moment, Sora can see someone inside. For a moment, it's like looking into a mirror—himself, clear as anything, inside that cocoon. The next second, it's turned monstrous—something without a face, with a dozen eyes, and a hundred more tendrils and roots shooting out in all directions.

All reaching for him.


	18. Midnight Summer III

Sora's awareness dims as the tendrils of darkness drag him into their cocoon. The devouring abyss engulfs his legs, crawls up his body, his psyche, whatever it is. Through one eye, he sees the cocoon closing around him. Through the other eye, he watches the darkness overtake his waking body. It strips away his conscious will and warps him into a bloodthirsty shadow.

Inside and out, he is paralyzed. Like a thing possessed, his body strikes out towards Marluxia in a murderous rage. Tendrils of darkness drag the ground and whip up dust as he flies.

The tendrils meet Marluxia's scythe with alarming force—force Sora alone does not possess. Marluxia's boots carve shallow dents into the ground as he slides back. Sora's darkness-controlled body strikes down again, and again, and again. The scythe wobbles with Marluxia's fatigue. He falters. Before either of them can blink, Sora lashes out and rakes claws of darkness down Marluxia's face.

Marluxia flips backward. His graceful landing belies the three red valleys carved down his otherwise perfect cheekbone. Sora waits for a grimace, a scowl of anger, anything—but still, Marluxia is impassive. Even when he smears the back of a gloved hand over the bloody marks. It is as if Xehanort's control over him keeps him in a state of passivity.

_Is that what's happening to me?_ Sora wonders in mute horror, trapped inside his own body.

His body springs again, glowing red claws at the ready.

He pounces on empty ground as Marluxia dissolves into air. Marluxia's scythe slams into him from behind, blade-first, controlled by seemingly no one. Pain rips up Sora's spine. The scythe spins past him again and again, leaving deep rips in his cloak and skin, shooting from edge to edge of the clearing. It moves too quickly for Sora to regain his balance. He blacks out and is momentarily catapulted back to his Station of Awakening. The cocoon of darkness engulfs him nearly to his collarbones. But the rage he feels on the outside is an overpowering high. It's a drug. He can't concentrate on anything but the pain he wants Marluxia to feel.

Sora grabs the scythe as it skims past. He hurls it at Marluxia as the assassin is melting into existence from the shadows. But Marluxia catches it. He slashes Sora one more time and flash-steps away. The barrage continues. Again and again, Sora throws himself after Marluxia. Again and again, he falls short. His rage builds. The shadows on his skin thicken, electric with anticipation. They sew together the wounds on the surface of his skin, but painful bruises remain.

Seeing Sora stumble, Marluxia disengages. He summons a Corridor of Darkness and backs over its threshold.

"No you don't!" Sora hears himself roar. He lunges recklessly. Marluxia brings down his scythe in a powerful two-handed strike. The blade sinks deep into Sora's shoulder. Sora grabs the handle. Marluxia throws his weight out to push Sora away, but Sora matches the force with his own might, clamping down with all his strength. Shadowy tendrils shoot forward from his sides and wrap around the handle, anchoring his and Marluxia's hands to it in a death grip.

The scythe thrums like iron caught between two repelling magnets. Each is close enough to feel the other's breath. Inside Marluxia, Sora senses a piece of Xehanort's own heart beating. Just like the one in him—that hollow black cocoon. Sora draws on this strange bond and calls to the shard of Xehanort in his own chest. It reacts hungrily. Like gunpowder to a candle's flame, the spark of darkness in Marluxia begins to burn high and hot, eating away at the vessel in which it resides.

The feeling is exhilarating, a shot of dopamine straight through the temple. The darkness seems to rise to the surface just under Marluxia's skin. His yellow eyes blaze. There is a gratifying glint of anguish deep inside. Then, it's gone.

"Suffer," hisses the warped voice seeping out of Sora's mouth. The conscious part of him is horrified. But another, more dominant part of him of wants more. He needs this to know he's still in control, even though on the inside—sinking into the darkness—he is not. His only respite is Marluxia's suffering. He wants _someone_ to suffer for what the Organization and Xehanort have done to him.

The realization fills him with a sickening mix of grief and self-loathing.

Then, Marluxia smiles. "Do you know how we met before, Sora? The truth is, I was much like you are now."

Despite his hollow, pleasant tone, his strength doesn't wane. Sora fights to keep his footing.

"I had plans to betray Organization XIII and dismantle it from within. But those plans never came to fruition—and you know why, don't you? Because you killed me." His smile grows sharp and malicious, but still, there is nothing behind it. "Ironic, isn't it, that I once stood where you stand now, throwing everything away for the people I loved. I suppose I have become what I most despised. So it shall be for you."

Sora roars. He wrenches the scythe, twisting it away from Marluxia. Marluxia lets it go and flips backward, landing further inside the Corridor of Darkness. Sora stands on the threshold, gripping the scythe and seething.

"I wonder," Marluxia says, "who will stand against you when you become the monster you fear so much? Your friends, perhaps? Will you cut them down, too?"

"You know nothing about us!" Sora doesn't notice his voice has lost its otherworldly hiss. "You wouldn't know what love was if it were staring you in the face!"

Marluxia's smile disappears. "Make no mistake, Sora. I sought you out and brought you here because I wanted to remember what it was like to hate you. You ruined me. You hurt the people I cared about, all those years ago. It is because of you that I am this hollow puppet." He looks down at himself, impassive. "Yet I still feel nothing. One day you will understand, I suppose."

"I'll never be like you," Sora spits out.

"That rage…" Marluxia muses. "This is what he has made you."

He charges, quick as lightning. Marluxia is slammed to the floor of the Corridor. He skids, finding his footing quickly, but by then, Sora is on him again, tearing at his face, his skin, his cloak.

Sora's hands are red, just like with Riku. Something tugs in his heart through his and Marluxia's shared link.

A force between them explodes outward. Sora flies back into the forest, skull cracking against the ground. His vision goes dark once again, and he sees inside himself with sudden clarity once more—the darkness creeping up his neck, flooding his mouth. It clots up in his throat and lodges there. He will be consumed in moments.

Then he returns to the waking world again. What rises from the dust between him and Marluxia is a figure like a white marble sculpture and far taller than them both. It's a Nobody—a skeletal figure draped with a reaper's cloak, large sleeves revealing long, spindly fingers that circle an enormous copy of Marluxia's scythe. Four enormous wings sprout from her back, two white and two black. They flow like silk, but the edges are like sharpened steel. Her mask-like face—graceful, impassive, and burning with yawning yellow voids behind the eyes—looms down over Sora.

Marluxia's stoic facade is gone. He clutches one limp arm, struggling to stand—his face is half-red, covered in a curtain of his own blood. His hair is matted with it. He moves as if to step between her and Sora, but she bars his path with the handle of the scythe. He looks up at her—she is easily four times his height, long robes seeming to swallow him behind their folds.

"Strelitzia," he gasps. "Please, no."


	19. Midnight Summer IV

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sora takes the first opening he sees and brutally tears Marluxia down from shoulder to hip. Marluxia grits his teeth. He grabs Sora by the front of his cloak, attempting what seems like a suicidal grapple. 
> 
> But before Sora can plunge his claws into Marluxia’s stomach, the assassin summons a Corridor of Darkness behind Sora and kicks out, throwing him down the long, dark hallway. It spits him out on the other side of the clearing. Sora’s back meets a tree with enough force to uproot it. It waylays him momentarily—he wheezes on his back in the grass, green chlorophyll staining his hair and skin. But the darkness takes care of the pain and blood within moments. Sora rises, brushing grass from his coat. Marluxia sinks to one knee in Strelitzia’s hands. Each breath he takes visibly pains him. 
> 
> “Strelitzia, stand down,” he gasps out, desperate to call the Nobody protecting him back into his body. “Please, this cannot happen again!”

Strelitzia attacks. Sora meets it midair, locking his claws with her massive scythe. It sears his hands through the covering darkness.

She knocks him back, and he goes at her again. It happens a third time, a fourth, a fifth. Her hits are lightning-fast, and they hurt like hell. Distantly, his body registers the abuse. But he refuses to stop. He has found his rhythm, just as he did against Marluxia's Assassin-class Nobodies, and the adrenaline carries him through the pain of smashing into the ground again and again. His hits begin to connect, cracking her body like porcelain.

He carves deep grooves into her metal wings. Black fire explodes from his hands, tendrils growing from his sides. They whip her as she strikes at him. His second skin of darkness heals him, even if it's imperfect. But her form is brittle. Every time his claws connect, pieces of her chip away. She could give chase as he blitzes around their arena, but she chooses instead to anchor herself in place. Protecting Marluxia. Bloodied, half-shredded Marluxia. His lifeless expression has been replaced by unbridled panic.

Strelitzia's guard breaks against Sora's relentless attack. Sora rushes at her again, aiming right for her eye. Before his claws connect, a cloud of darkness bursts out of thin air. He flies through it. Marluxia appears on the other side and blocks the attack. They skirmish there, suspended in midair just shy of Strelitzia's face. But at close range, both know Sora has the advantage. He takes the first opening he sees and brutally tears Marluxia down from shoulder to hip. Marluxia grits his teeth. He grabs Sora by the front of his cloak, attempting what seems like a suicidal grapple.

But before Sora can plunge his claws into Marluxia's stomach, the assassin summons a Corridor of Darkness behind Sora and kicks out, throwing him down the long, dark hallway. It spits him out on the other side of the clearing. Sora's back meets a tree with enough force to uproot it. He crashes to the ground alongside it. It waylays him momentarily—he wheezes on his back in the grass, green chlorophyll staining his hair and skin. But the darkness takes care of the pain and blood within moments. Sora rises, brushing grass from his coat. Marluxia sinks to one knee in Strelitzia's hands. Each breath he takes visibly pains him.

"Strelitzia, stand down," he gasps out, desperate to call the Nobody protecting him back into his body. "Please, this cannot happen again!"

It shocks Sora, finally, back to his senses. _This is wrong_ , a part of himself says.

 _Why should I care?_ The dominating part of him demands to know.

 _Because Marluxia cares,_ the first part whispers. Another glimpse into his mindscape—he senses the cocoon's walls tightening around him. He's paralyzed. The darkness leeches his strength and will with alarming efficiency.

 _Break free,_ he tells himself. He tries to recall the thing that always centers him in his mind—the memory of sitting with Kairi and Riku on their paopu tree. He tries to remember his will to keep them safe and bring them home. Instead, what fills his mind is the horrible image of Riku bleeding on the ground. Riku dead at his feet. He can't remember what it is to feel friendship or despair or hope. All he can think is that he doesn't want to hurt anyone anymore. He never wants to hurt anyone else ever again.

The darkness lodges in his throat, and he can't breathe.

Already he feels his body moving of its own accord to finish off Marluxia and Strelitzia.

 _Strelitzia,_ he thinks. _Her name is Strelitzia. I won't hurt Strelitzia._

He cannot pull his body loose. But with a burst of willpower, one hand tears free of the closing cocoon. And another pair of hands—two pairs—three pairs are suddenly there, pulling him free.

He comes to just as he is flying towards Strelitzia's face, claws at the ready. The strike is aimed at a spiderweb-shaped crack stretched across her cheekbone, and he carries the force and deadly precision to shatter. Moments from impact, Sora regains an ounce of control. Barely enough—but just enough—to keep the strike from flying true.

Instead of her cheek, he flies past her and sends the charged-up attack slamming into her wing. The pent-up darkness in him breaks two wings clean off. Sora is thrown after them and lands in a heap. The metal wings slice vertically into the ground deeper in the forest.

It was a heavy hit, but not a lethal one.

He stands and winces. His joints are hot with the strain of the battle, and he wonders if he's expended too much darkness to heal himself. Behind him, Marluxia drops to the ground. Gritting his teeth with effort, he summons an enormous portal under Strelitzia. Slowly, she sinks down into the abyss. Her body creaks with the low crackle of stone grinding on bone. Her blank yellow eyes watch Marluxia as she dissipates into mist.

Then, slowly, Marluxia turns to him. He walks toward Sora, limping heavily. The look on his face is beyond hatred. It's murder.

Sora takes a step back. His leg collapses under him. His body, already suffering agony from the battle, seems to refuse his control. He hunches over the ground on his knees, helpless as Marluxia draws closer. He is nearly close enough to touch.

Marluxia raises his hand. Black fire gathers in his fist. "I hope you suffer just as much as I have under his thumb," Marluxia grinds out through gritted teeth. Darkness licks at the edges of his coat— _he's dying_ , Sora realizes with a raw shock. Marluxia's form is so damaged it's giving out. He's fading into nothingness.

"I—" _I'm sorry, I never wanted this_ , is what Sora tries to say, but he can only cough and choke. The darkness is still lodged in his throat.

"If you wish to embrace the darkness," Marluxia whispers, "then let yourself be bathed in it. Let it become inescapable."

He touches Sora's forehead. Sora flinches backward. The spell burns him. Then—nothing. No _coup de grâce._ He opens his eyes. Sees nothing.

He blinks. His lids sweep over his eyes as he tries to blink away the darkness. He can't see his hands in front of his face, he realizes, understanding dawning on him. Marluxia bound shadows to his eyes.

He is blinded.

Marluxia's death is silent. He simply releases a sigh and crackling flames eat his form away. Just like that, he ceases to exist once again.

And Sora is alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Perhaps this not the last we'll see of Marluxia and Strelitzia. c:  
> A billion thank yous to my kind reviewers! Every review is another push to keep writing!


	20. Midnight Summer V

He can’t have murdered Riku. He could never murder anybody. Except that he wanted to, just now. He wanted to dig his claws into Marluxia and make him pulp. The urge was alien. But despite his training, despite his devotion to goodness, justice, mercy, kindness—Marluxia’s blood is warm and wet on his hands. Sora is cold.

 _Show me justice and mercy,_ an embittered voice inside says. _They’re just_ ideas. _They don’t live or breathe or suffer. Why is it so wrong to make other people suffer for what they’ve done to me?_

It’s the same inner voice that won out before. The voice that came out of his mouth and guided his hands when he was tearing Marluxia apart. 

Then pain flashes across his cheek and sends him twisting across the grass. On instinct, he lets the momentum from the blow carry him into a roll. His feet find grounding in a low, defensive crouch. A long cut opens up across his cheek, and warm beads of blood well up. His shaking knees threaten to buckle.

Despite the warm daylight, Sora can’t see anything no matter how he tries to blink the darkness in his eyes away. 

Whatever struck him looms closer. The forest shakes and brushes against itself as it moves through the trees. The smell of darkness wrinkles Sora’s nose. 

_What’s more blood on my hands?_ that voice says. His heart thuds painfully. _After Riku._

Another sharp blow tears down the side of his head, catching his ear. Someone laughs. It’s muffled and low, and it’s coming from everywhere around him. Sora wonders briefly if he’s hallucinating the sound or if it’s bubbling up from his own throat. 

A twig snaps behind him. He spins around, claws forming on his fingers before he can stop them. They rake through a Heartless. It screams with that odd, garbled voice and lurches backward. Other Heartless crowd closer with their acrid smell. They’ve sensed their opportunity to strike with the more powerful Nobody’s disappearance. 

Sora rips his hands away and shakes them as if the action could dislodge the claws half-formed on his fingers. All it does is scatter Marluxia’s blood. A drop hits his forehead and runs down his nose. It brings to mind memories of the islands’ warm summer rain turning to furious storms—hurricanes splintering the wooden playhouses as he and Kairi and Riku huddled underneath, a stripe of raging ocean cutting them off from the safety of home. His racing heart seizes. 

Those claws belong to the creature he became when he woke up in the Keyblade Graveyard. But it existed before that. It’s something—someone—that seeps out only when anger and desperation run high. “ _It’s like an anti-Sora_ ,” Riku once said. _Antiform,_ he called it. 

_Wrong_ , the voice says. _I’ve always been here._

It cracks with repressed anger. It is underscored horribly by that low, distorted rattle echoing in his head. Worse than that, though, is that the voice is unmistakably his.

More Heartless whistle through the air to strike again, but Sora is in no mood to fight. He pushes himself away on aching legs, past grabbing claws. 

He stumbles through the forest. His cloak snags on sharp bark and thorny shrubs. If he runs fast and far enough, maybe he can leave all of this behind, he thinks. But the terror flooding his limbs knows better.

No part of him could have ever hurt Riku consciously. Could never _murder_ him. And yet Riku is hurt. Dead. _Missing_. Sora’s lungs burn. Riku can’t be dead. _But what if he is?_ He can’t be. _What if it’s my fault?_

Sora tries to retrace the mental thread that leads back to that incident before the Keyblade Graveyard. He remembers pieces. The smell of blood, slippery on his hands, the plunge of his possessed hand into viscera, the shock on Riku’s eyes as he slipped into his defense—

What will Kairi say? Or Mickey, or Donald, or Goofy? “You couldn’t have stopped it! You couldn’t control your body,” they would insist. Even if it’s true, it changes nothing.

His stumbles. His hand grabs his own rib cage, mirroring where he remembers plunging his knife like shadow claws into Riku. The patch of half-healed skin there—a burn, still hot and angry, where Axel reacted Riku’s defense. Those were the actions of someone who couldn’t have realized the danger of the was too close at hand. 

_How could I have let this happen? After all this time and everything I’ve fought for? Did it mean nothing to be a Guardian of Light? Did it mean nothing to wield the Kingdom Key? What about the fallen worlds restored? Is there nothing I could’ve done?_

His boot catches and he hits the ground hard. The sound of his own breathing—gasping for air, overwhelming, sobbing—drowns out everything except his screaming thoughts. Then one voice from the cacophony cuts through.

_You’re still you, Sora._

The sound freezes him. He would know that voice anywhere.

“Kairi?” he calls out. But no response comes. It could be a trick of his weary mind. The exhaustion and pain are becoming too much.

Then, in the distance, a shout: 

“I’m not going anywhere with you!” 

It echos back from where he last left the Heartless. It’s not a voice he recognizes. Probably an innocent denizen of this world passing through.

“Stay back! I’m serious, I will use this!”

There is no response from Kairi. Only silence. He can’t sense her here, no matter how he strains, so he tears himself away from this place while he still has the will to go.

* * *

The Heartless’ stink guides him back. They are dispatched with two decisive blows that deal with the largest and foulest of the bunch. The others retreat until the acrid smell has faded into the tang of chlorophyll. The short burst of adrenaline leaves Sora’s limbs heavy and useless. He sinks to the ground with a splash.

“Oh, my gosh! Are you okay?” The owner of the shout from before kneels down beside him. 

Before he can reply, a cough wells up deep in his chest. He muffles it with his elbow, but he can’t keep the shakes from racking his body.

The leathery mouth of a water skin touches his lips. He sips, then takes another two grateful gulps. It washes down the grit in his throat somewhat, though it’s still raw.

“Your cheek is bleeding. I have bandages. Can I touch you? Can you speak?” she asks.

Even if he can, he’s afraid someone else’s voice will come out. But he tries it, slowly, and finds he doesn’t have to fight for control. “Did those creatures hurt you?”

“Uh-uh.” A soft and pliant cloth dabs the cut on his cheek.

Sora sags with relief. He just needs to get out of here before he puts anyone else in danger.

“There.” The cloth disappears from his now-dry cheek. She helps him to his feet. She seems to be about the same height as he is, given her leverage point. She releases his arm and begins to speak. Then she gasps. “Your eyes…”

Sora shuts his eyes quickly. His skin prickles self-consciously. He almost explains the curse of Darkness, remembering the pictures of it in the pages of Yen Sid’s huge, ancient tomes. But he can’t. The other worlds are secret, and it would invite too many questions. “Sorry. I—uh, I forgot,” he says lamely. Inwardly, he wants to smack himself. _Like that makes any sense._

“No! No, don’t be. It’s okay. I’ve just never seen anything like like it. It’s kind of pretty. Like tiny little storm clouds in your eyes. Does it hurt?”

He scratches the back of his neck. “Nah! Can’t feel it. But the rest of me isn’t feeling too hot,” he admits.

“Lucky for you I’m a healer. There’s a place I passed on my way here that smelled like pumpkin soup—let’s go back there and get you fixed up, okay? How does that sound?”

Sora’s stomach growls. He’s been ignoring the all-consuming black hole of hunger there for too long. “Food sounds…”

“Don’t even think about it, Sora. Get out of here before the Organization puts this girl or anyone else in harm’s way.”

“Huh?” Sora looks around, instantly on guard, but doesn’t sense anyone else. “Is someone there?”

“Don’t do it. I’m serious.”

It speaks again. And this time, it’s too clear to be a hallucination. Something like hope wells up in Sora’s chest. He knows exactly who it is. He calls out, turning a slow circle.

“Who are you talking to?” the girl asks, perplexed.

“So much for the Power of Waking,” Roxas mutters. “Being conscious doesn’t help either of us if the body we’re sharing is full of darkness.”


	21. Midnight Summer VI

The crumpled figure lying at Saïx’s feet is robed all in black and white. When he stoops to to pull the hood away, revealing a tangle of long ginger hair, Larxene sucks in a breath and pushes his hand away with a burst of characteristic anger. What’s not characteristic is the way she drops to her knees and reaches for the girl with stiff, unprepared movements. She pulls the girl to her lap, letting the hair spill over her cloak as she leans the girl’s sleeping head against her shoulder. 

She treats the girl with a reverence Saïx sees rarely on display in his fellow Nobodies. _This is someone you knew before_ , he thinks. Something like nostalgia twists Larxene’s face. And that feeling is a powerful thing—it can sway Nobodies in irrational ways. The compulsion to do right by one’s long-gone Somebody is much like experiencing the emotions of one’s previous self. It is an echo of a heart no longer present. 

Seeing Larxene stirs something hollow in Saïx’s chest. He knows the feeling but has not felt it in some time because of Axel. The last time, in the throne room of the Castle that Never Was, the familiar jealous twinge in Saïx’s throat turned into heat and rage when he noticed Lea’s recompleted form. And when Lea tried to save Sora—tried to be a hero, Saïx made sure he failed. Saïx made sure it hurt.

“She’s a Nobody,” Saïx says, as he observes the girl has the same face as that statuesque Nobody Marluxia keeps hidden. Now, though, she’s quite frail. Her paper-thin skin is dotted with bruises. 

“Don’t tell me you’ve been right under my nose all this time.” Larxene says this as if she has forgotten Saïx is there. Her hands tighten, encircling the girl like shackles. 

It does not bode well that they happened upon this scene in the Kingdom of Corona, in search of Marluxia and unfortunate teammate Sora on Xehanort’s orders. All around the scene, a half-mile out or more, are thick, ancient trees snapped in half. Wood chips litter the grass as if some have been obliterated into splinters. Others look like they have been turned to dust and wood pulp from halfway up. The culprits—what look like two giant silver blades, as tall as any tree in the forest—jut out of the ground like crooked gravestones. 

Xehanort’s suspicions of trouble—the reason for his and Larxene’s vaguely-justified mission here—seem to be validated by this destruction. Yet the Guardians of Light don’t have the means for this kind of destruction unless Yen Sid paid this land a visit. It was Marluxia who acted so very strange about accompanying Sora here. And now, seeing evidence of a fight…

Saïx’s boots leave wet imprints on the grass as he circles one of those giant blades. It’s twilight; the dew is heavy and the darkness gives them plenty of cover to investigate. He glances into the reflection on the surface of the blade, where Larxene cradles the girl. “Signs of Marluxia, but not Sora.”

“Good riddance,” Larxene mutters. 

“Perhaps Sora escaped Marluxia’s watch.”

“Marluxia would never let that happen,” Larxene snaps. “He would never let it happen again.”

That’s right—Sora and Marluxia have fought before. Saïx only skimmed that portion of the Castle Oblivion report. “What an enormous waste of time this will have been if Marluxia turned traitor again just to kill one boy.”

Larxene says nothing. It’s no secret that she still hates Sora for what he put her through. Xehanort’s punishment for her—already a clear unfavorite—requires her to be watched at all times by a senior member. This time by Saïx—by his own reasoning, an attempt to add insult to injury, as he is well aware of his reputation as someone tucked close under Superior Xemnas’ wing.

Even so, Saïx sees reasons to bend the rules in light of this new development. He would like to avoid running into the Guardians of Light, should they be prowling around. Besides, he strongly suspects that, by now, they have begun building more replicas.

“Elrena,” the girl says. Larxene’s attention snaps back to her in an instant. Even in the fuzzy reflection through which Saïx catches this, her reactions are a little too vulnerable. Too honest. The girl—Stre _lit_ zia, with a lilt—breaks her open too easily.

Larxene stares down into Strelitzia’s open eyes. “What happened to Marluxia?”

“I made him worry. I made him weak.”

“Don’t say that.”

“It’s true, Elrena.” Strelitzia’s face is impassive. “He made too many mistakes. He’s dead.”

Larxene turns rigid. Marluxia’s fate is as good as sealed, then. 

“This is that stupid kid’s fault,” she says, voice low in anger. She is not playing a role. There are no theatrics. “He’ll pay. He’ll pay—”

“Let me handle the investigation,” Saïx says. “If Sora is the one responsible for this, I will deal with him. It will be better to handle the matter here than to let Xemnas and the others know.”

Larxene locks her gaze to his, and an aura of static charges the air around him.

“You don’t want to be punished further. Don’t you agree, Strelitzia?” He shifts his gaze from Larxene’s inscrutable gaze to Strelitzia’s blank one.

“I don’t want you to die again,” Strelitzia says.

It seems to make up Larxene’s mind for her. 

A Corridor of Darkness appears as Larxene picks Strelitzia up in her arms. She refuses to look at Saïx. “Don’t act like you care. Just make him pay.”

The hum of the darkness fills a long silence. “Do not let the others see your feelings for that girl. They will find ways to use it against you,” he says. Then, he speeds away from the clearing. If Sora is lucky, the Heartless will finish him off before the Organization’s petty interpersonal drama can do it instead.


	22. Midnight Summer VII

"You can't see me," Roxas mutters. "Rat bastard blinded us."

"Don't you hear that?" Sora asks urgently.

The girl hesitates. "I hear music…"

"No, no, it's his voice. It sounds like— it's—" Sora's wits stretch frustratingly thin, mind racing too quickly for him to focus on anything long enough to _know_ what he wants to say, much less spit it out.

Instead, he grabs the girl's hand and rounds back to the place where he heard Kairi's voice. He calls her name, but before it can leave his throat, something seizes his vocal cords and he doubles over, hacking. He swallows the racking coughs down as best he can, one hand clutching at the neck of his black coat.

He tries again, but as soon as he opens his mouth, the coughing worsens until he can't speak at all. His chest constricts. He can barely breathe.

But if Kairi is here, he can't just let her go. She wouldn't give up on him if things were reversed. Curse or no curse.

"Please, Sora, you need to be calm or they'll find you." Kairi's voice again. Pleading, right there. Right in front of him. But when he reaches out, nobody is there.

Sora's heart feels like it's going to break inside his chest. He was almost there—almost home.

"Is anybody there?"

The girl's voice answers. "Nobody is here but us."

She should be right there. _Right there._

Roxas speaks again. "You're hallucinating. It's a trick. Just like—"

"No, Roxas. I'm here," Kairi's voice says again, quieter.

~

From the inside, Sora's heart is a tangle of stained glass. Memories made of glass and lead molding whirl about as if thrown by a hurricane's winds.

He's not the only one here in Sora's heart, rattling the glass walls like a trapped animal. He senses other orphaned hearts here. He studies the glass-etched memories stretching out before him, turning corner after corner. Sora's memories. His own memories. Memories of other people he doesn't recognize.

Roxas has this feeling he's been here for some time, walking in his sleep. Heart now awake, he searches the shifting glass halls for a way out. There is so much darkness here, but at least Sora can hear him. He can hear the voice Sora hears, too. And he can see what Sora sees, as the stained glass maze forms images of new memories. Sora's voice echoes down the halls, desperate to find Kairi. Again. Kairi is no stranger to Roxas. They've shared a heart before. He would know if she were here. She's not.

Yet that voice that sounds like hers isn't coming from the world outside. It's coming from somewhere inside Sora's heart, too. Somewhere in this maze.

He turns a corner and stops dead. Embedded in the glass floor before him is a replica Kingdom Key. He rests his hand on it. The glass stills. His fingers tighten around the hilt, testing how much force he'll need to pull it loose.

"Wait, stop." Kairi's-voice-that-isn't-Kairi buzzes around his shoulders, no longer speaking to Sora but to him directly. "You shouldn't touch that."

"Who are you?"

She says, "I'm Sora."

She's lying. He rips the replica keyblade free. The glass walls around him shudder and, with a roar, they break.

~

"Anyone ever tell you how stubborn you are?" Axel says.

"What was that?" Kairi smirks over her shoulder at him from the captain's chair of Sora's former gummi ship. The one she convinced him to steal on their way out.

They've begun chasing rumors about mysterious figures clothed in black. Most leads are dead ends. But Kairi is too dogged to give up.

 _She's pure chaos_ , Axel thinks from the copilot seat, putting his feet up on the dashboard. _At least as much as Sora. Maybe worse._

Sailing through the stars with Kairi at the helm, Axel's eyes drift shut. He dreams.

In his dreams, he sees someone in a black coat like his, someone who carries a copied Kingdom Key like Roxas'. He's had this dream before. Every time he tries to get a better look at her, she disappears. But this time, when he follows her, her hood falls. She swings her keyblade at him. It lands with a sound like shattering glass.

He vaults forward, exploding back into the waking world. His face is wet with tears. He remembers the girl he swore he'd bring back.

~

Roxas looks up to see his own face—his own station of awakening within this maze. It creates and uncreates itself among Sora's own memories as if resisting being overwritten. He is pictured with his black cloak and Kingdom Key and his own face missing pieces. Axel's picture is next to his, encircled by a lead halo. Naminé's, too, her expression at peace in Kairi's own heart. Roxas' heart squeezes painfully, reminded of their sacrifices.

But there's another empty space where someone should be. The glass there is broken and the lead frame missing. Before his eyes, it begins to repair itself. Lead molding curls into place like vines. Jagged glass edges fit together to fill the empty space. She takes shape slowly.

There's a name on his lips. He doesn't understand why.

When he speaks it aloud, she whispers, "What have you done?"

His heels hit another wall behind him, caging him in. He spins around, avoiding the lead twisting itself into a new image. No—it's another station of awakening. The same person shown in his own station of awakening appears here—someone with black hair and cloak like his. The glass halo circling her face is accompanied by other halos encircling the faces of Axel, of him, of Xemnas, and of Sora.

"Xion," the name spills out again. "Is it really you?"

"No," she whispers.

it _is_ her. She's here in Sora's heart, he suddenly remembers, because her body was destroyed. At his Roxas' own. But when he tries to recall the circumstances of her death, his memories are clouded by unfathomable, unbearable guilt.

A shadow flickers behind Xion's station of awakening. Standing just beyond the glass—she's right there. His fingers scrabble around the soft metal frame, searching for a way through.

"Please, Xion, talk to me."

"I'm not real," she says.

He can't stop his voice from cracking. "You're _lying_."

"I'm part of Sora now. This is how it needs to be."

He bangs his fists against the glass. More and more memories return, and panic rises as he sees her disappearing again. Just like before. He pleads, then shouts as she backs away.

"I'm sorry, Roxas."

She disappears into the maze's shadows.

**Author's Note:**

> Please visit this story's blog (kingdom-hearts-fic-writing.tumblr.com) to read next chapter's preview, find bonus story notes, snippets, dialogue, art, and yell about Kingdom Hearts!


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